Symbiosis
by Brobdingnagian Pseudonym
Summary: John had never imagined that he'd ever find himself living with a vampire. But if he had, he'd probably imagine a few more... stone walls and rusted iron chains and less quaint wallpaper and elderly ladies pushing biscuits.
1. Nothing Like the Movies

**_Summary: The easiest way to kill a vampire isn't with a stake or silver bullets or whatever you idiot humans keep writing up. Holy water just makes us wetter. And garlic... Well, I actually like a bit of garlic to spice up a meal. No, the easiest way to kill a vampire is love. Give me someone to dote over. A warm body to hold close when the days get long and the nights grow cold. Someone sweet to feed from and strong to keep me safe while I'm digesting. Give me your human love, with all it's fleeting brilliance and fragile beauty and I'll die with you, happy but much too young. I care for all of my donors. That's how I survive. But the day I start loving one will be the beginning of the end._**

_**Well, that or an hour in the sun.**_

* * *

_Hey guys! I know I should really be writing for some of my other unfinished stories, but the idea of a casually vampiric Sherlock wouldn't stop bugging me._

_Before you read, I need you to know a few things. First, vampires in this universe are their own underground society. Almost like wizards in harry potter. Second, my intention with this story is to make them a little... different from your average dark, mysterious 'sexy predator' vampires. You'll get what I mean the farther we get into the story. Third, there will be johnlocky romance in this story. I plan on easing into it gradually and even then it won't really be the centerpiece of the story. But still. It'll be there._

* * *

His skin was pale but hardly lifeless. Except, perhaps on his driver's license. He smelled strongly of death. But as they were in a morgue, that wasn't much of a surprise. His eyes were piercing and his silhouette was striking, but he still wasn't quite what Bram Stoker had described. They sat at either side of an empty slab, as all of the tables were taken. A small, nervous-looking morgue attendant flitted around them, attending the deceased patients.

"It's symbiotic really," The vampire explained in a voice that wasn't at all like Bela Lugosi's. "If all goes well, this arrangement can benefit both of us. I will suck the life out of you, yes. But you will not go without proper repayment."

"Money, right?" John was at the end of his rope in many ways, but mostly financially. He managed to convince himself that once he had some money, he could sort all the rest out. Once he could afford to live, he could work on wanting to.

"If you like. Money, lodging, food, medical and dental care. If you prove to be a valuable asset to me, I can give you anything you need to sustain your life." _Anything I need to keep his food supply high, more like._ John wouldn't let this 'Sherlock' character fool him into thinking he's anything more than livestock in this deal. "As well as the more… traditional forms of compensation."

"What's that?"

"Oh, you really are new to this. In the short term, the endorphins in vampire saliva is known to cause a high which, I've heard, feels like a prolonged orgasm." The mousy girl in the lab coat dropped a petri dish. She squeaked when it broke against the ground. Sherlock let out a low groan and shot a slow glare her way.

"...sorry." She disappeared under a table to pick up the pieces. "he's right, by the way."

His only response was an exasperated eyeroll. "And in the long term, I could offer you a good death and immortality."

John tried not to be too horrified. Mark told him these people had a few... cultural quirks."...I think I'll stick with the money, thank you very much."

Sherlock smirked, his eyes narrowing cattishly. "Molly, draw his blood."

John watched in morbid fascination as Sherlock drank the small vial of his blood like a frat guy drinks a shot. The vampire said it was just to get a taste of what he was buying, but he tipped the contents down his throat so quickly that John wondered if he tasted it at all.

Sherlock hummed his approval. Then, after a half second's pause, tipped the vial back over his mouth to shake out the last few drops. When it was clear there was nothing left, he began licking the rim of the receptacle for whatever traces were left over. Even Molly seemed to be shocked.

"That good, is it?" John smirks, ready to grab a stray scalpel should the vampire forget the formalities and lunge for him. Sherlock pursed his lips, sucking them clean.

"If you were that hungry I-" He cut off the morgue attendant by pushing the empty vial into Molly's hands. Then reached into his jacket pocket. Despite his better judgement, John found himself watching his every move closely.

"You're a bit anemic." Sherlock pulled out a small black notepad and began to scribble something into it.

"Yeah, I could be eating better." That was the entire point he was here, after all.

He continued writing without a moment's pause. "You haven't been on any drugs, prescribed or otherwise. Low alcohol content too, but that doesn't say much as the human body metabolizes alcohol rather quickly."

"You can tell?" It briefly occurred to John that hospitals could save so much time and money by hiring a vampire to do blood taste tests. But he doubted they would consider it entirely sanitary.

"How do you feel about the violin?"

He was thrown so off balance that he briefly forgot what a violin was. "I'm… sorry?"

"I play the violin when I'm thinking. Sometimes I don't talk for days on end."

"And I'm left-handed. What does that have to do with... anything?"

He ripped a page out of the notepad. "Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other, wouldn't you say?"

John was sure that the qualities listed didn't come close to Sherlock's worst. "Who said anything about flatmates?"

Sherlock just flashed him an infuriatingly knowing smile. As if he'd just told a joke and didn't even know it yet. The brilliant green of his eyes seemed to whisper '_slap me, you know want to'._"You're a soldier recently discharged due to an injury. You're living in a bedsit which you can barely afford and as a consequence feel cornered enough to sell your life's blood to keep it, even though you hate it so much you often consider just sleeping on the street. You have nothing to live for, no one to miss you but no reason to die. As far as I'm concerned, we've been talking about nothing but flatmates." Sherlock grinned viciously, his eyes were more alive than anything in that morgue. John sucked in a breath and held it. He was angry. Seething. Furious. He felt like putting a bullet through the man's laughing eyes or slitting his throat and letting him drown in his own arterial spray.

Months later, he'd look back on this moment and remember that he had never felt more alive.

"This should cover your unpaid rent. With some extra for... food or whatever." The vampire spat out the word 'food' as if it were some petty adolescent fad as he quickly wrote out a check and folded it into the page he had ripped out of his notepad. He placed it neatly on the middle of the slab and swept out of the room, pulling on his coat and gloves as he went. "I'll be seeing you."

John felt like he should ask something before he left. About the deal. About this flatmate business. About him in general. But before he could catch hold of a thought and pin it down, Sherlock was gone. "Yeah, he's always like that." Molly chirped apologetically.

"Is he?" He mumbled in response, his mind already pre-occupied with the note laying on top of a check written out for enough money to buy a small palace.

_"221b baker street." _Read the note in neat, looping handwriting. "_Bring your gun."_

John was out the door so quickly, he almost forgot the check

* * *

_Thanks for reading! I've already got the first few chapters posted on AO3, but I've gotten a little stuck. So I really need as much feedback from you guys as I can get. I'd love to hear what you think. What parts did you love? Or, more importantly, what parts did you hate? Do you have anything you'd like me to expand on? Any ideas or predictions for future chapters? Let me know! _


	2. Welcome Home

John wasn't sure how it happened. He didn't remember ever actually agreeing to move in. He never signed a lease. The landlady never even asked him to. It's been over a month and he still hadn't even officially moved out of his shitty bedsit.

And yet, this morning John woke up in a room he immediately recognized as his own. He couldn't remember the last time he did that. John sighed, nodded his approval at the patch of sunny sky out his window and walked downstairs, pausing for a moment when he realized that the act was utterly painless.

When he reached the kitchen, he found a cup of hot tea waiting for him as it always did, but this time in the hand of his flatmate.

"Sugar?" John shook his head, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table. It briefly occurred to him that he pulled out the same chair yesterday and the day before and if he kept going on like this, the chair was in danger of becoming his. He brushed the thought aside when Sherlock set his mug in front of him.

"Thank you." He sipped at it, the warmth of it immediately spreading through his chest. His eyes fluttered shut at the sensation. "Mm. That's lovely." He opened them to find Sherlock studying him intently from over the rim of his own cup. The vampire's gaze slid aimlessly off to the side, as though it was a mere passing glance, but John wasn't fooled. Still, John let it go for now. He was in the mood to let things go.

"You drink tea?" He hadn't seen his night-dwelling flatmate very often since he more-or-less failed to reject his offer to live together. When he did, the strange man always seemed to be busy. Sometimes he was busy with one of his visitors, other times he was busy staring at the bits of paper gruesome photos pinned all over the walls and mumbling to himself. He didn't know which was more surprising, the fact that he was up this early or the fact that he hadn't demanded payment in blood thus far.

"Mm. Most liquids, actually. But, to be fair, it has got a drop of Molly in it." John giggled, despite himself. In the morgue, the man had seemed so sharp and dangerous, but here, in the cluttered little flat with the quaint wallpaper and skulls scattered about like morbid Easter eggs, he seemed almost normal. It was impossible to think of him as the subject of a thousand black and white era horror movies when his eyes were dull and crusted and his hair was ruffled.

Mrs. Hudson came in with a platter of breakfast foods nearly as big as she was. "Good morning, John. And Sherlock! Oh, I do hope your case went well. That was a long one, wasn't it? From the way you looked yesterday, I was sure you wouldn't be up and about until next week. I had a boyfri-"

Sherlock raised his bony hand to halt our landlady's relentless onslaught of polite conversation. "Mrs. Hudson. Don't take this the wrong way, but your mindless drivel could wake the dead then bore them back to death immediately after. And, in my current state, I honestly don't think I could survive it."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot you're not a morning person." I really didn't think there was a good way to take that, but Mrs. Hudson found it anyways. She turned back to me, whispering as she laid more food out in front of me than I usually eat in an entire day. "That one's got a tongue as sharp as his fangs, but don't let it get to you. "

Sherlock rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, letting his head hang over the backrest. It was the very picture of dramatized exasperation. "Gawwwd, I don't even haaave fangs."

"Yeah, I can see that now." John's paranoia that his flatmate might sneak into his room and suck him dry in his sleep disappeared. And it had little to do with Sherlock's dental arrangements. "Thank you Mrs. H. You really didn't have to."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all. It's nice having someone with a working stomach to cook for." She chirped as she left the kitchen.

John took a deep breath as he sunk his fork into his mountain of pancake. If he didn't know otherwise, he'd be afraid that the lovely little old lady was attempting to fatten him up for thanksgiving dinner.

Sherlock rose and threw open the fridge door in a whirl of motion and satin. "Don't worry about not finishing it. She's usually too high to be offended," He commented as he sat back down with a plastic bag labelled 'Lestrade' in his hand. He opened a valve at one end of it and began sucking it as he settled back in his seat.

"High?" John wasn't sure how he still had the capacity to be baffled. Then again... that would explain the massive quantities of food. And the endless patience. "On what?"

"Only marijuana these days," Sherlock mumbled through the corner of his mouth that was not occupied. It became very clear that talking time was over when the vampire became engrossed in the rather expensive phone that had materialized in his hand.

After finishing the pancakes and nibbling at the eggs, John pushed aside his various plates. He glared at the french toast, bacon and sausages for daring to still look delicious when he seriously couldn't eat another bite. But forgave them when he realized they'd probably still be just as good at lunchtime.

The army doctor sighed and hauled himself to his feet, feeling about ten pounds heavier than e did when he sat down. He picked up a few of the dishes and headed for the fridge. What he found in it nearly caused him to drop the bacon.

"Hands," John muttered, taking a deep breath to steady himself. "There are hands in the fridge," He announced to the vampire at the breakfast table.

"Just move them aside." He muttered, not looking up from his phone.

"There are about a dozen of them. Left hands." He waited for some sort of answer but got none. "_Why_ do you have a dozen left hands in your fridge?"

"I was hardly going to keep them under my pillow, was I?" He snapped, momentarily lifting his mouth from it's place on the blood bag. "Measuring the muscle definition of left hands for work."

"What work?" As John rearranged the gruesome into a sort of heap, he tried to think of what kind of career would require one to keep a dozen left hands. The only conclusion he could come up with was 'mad scientist'.

"Mmm. Tired now," Sherlock mumbled, his speech slightly slurred. The now empty blood bag fell from his mouth to the table. "Tell you in an hour or so..." He pulled himself to his feet with some effort and swayed like a drunk to the couch, where he collapsed into a blue satin heap.

"Of course," John sighed, shoving the various plates haphazardly into the safest parts of the fridge that he could manage. The army doctor then took his laptop from where it was charging on the coffee table and opened it as he settled into a chair by the fireplace. Now was as good a time as ever to write up a blog entry.

And this time, he might actually have something to write about.

* * *

*please excuse my unconventional spelling of the word 'god' I couldn't find another way to elongate the word without making it look like 'good'

*Also, most vampires in this universe do have fangs. Sherlock just had his removed as a kid (They grew in wrong)


	3. A Study in Scarlet (part 1)

_Hey! This is the first case fic I've ever done. So it might be a little... rough._

_This is part one of three. Enjoy!_

* * *

"Shit," The writer muttered to herself. There was nothing left to write. No words that had yet been unspoken. No ideas that hadn't been thoroughly used and abused and tossed aside like a sticky condom. It was as if the universe had run out of ideas. As if life itself had run dry.

"Maybe I'll think up something new in the morning," She sighed to the empty room, shutting off her computer and stumbling, defeated, to her bedroom. In her melancholy, she failed to notice the subtle click of her front door unlocking. She changed out of her baggy, worn 'house clothes' and, after a moment of consideration, decided against pajamas. It was going to be a warm night. Later, she might come to regret this decision. But she wouldn't regret it for long. Besides, it wouldn't have mattered either way.

There was a scream in the night.

* * *

"He calls himself 'the muse'," Said the forensic investigator named Anderson, pointing out the words scrawled on the door frame as they entered.

Lestrade groaned. He really wasn't fond of these dramatic types. Sure, they were ultimately easier to catch, what with their arrogance and need for attention. But the crime scenes were always so gruesome. Not to mention the panic when the media sunk their teeth into it.

John tried to make some sort of sense of his current situation. Sherlock told him he was going to a murder scene, but he never explained why. Or why John needed to be there... Or why everyone investigating the crime were looking at him like he was responsible for the murder.

Inside the room, a small army of people in sterile blue plastic buzzed about the small apartment taking samples, snapping pictures. They all began to disperse even before Lestrade called for a ten minute break. Anderson lingered, unable to resist putting in his own opinion. "No one's seen anything like it. But if I had to guess... I'd say he's some sort of satanist fanatic."

Lestrade pretended to consider that possibility before dismissing him. Sherlock made a show of biting his tongue and not saying anything.

"She," Sherlock corrected the second Anderson left, shutting the door behind him. He walked in circles around the bedroom-turned-crime-scene, crouching at regular intervals in an effort to look at the scene from different angles. From where John stood, it almost looked like a strange dance. "Oh, I love a female serial killer. They're always so... inventive."

"Inventive? Sherlock, this is a murder," John choked out, trying not to vomit at the gruesome sight before him.

Sherlock said they were going to investigate a murder, but nothing could prepare him for this. The poor girl was strung up from the ceiling with fishing line, her arms outstretched like a bizarre crucifixion. Her skin was carved up strategically with delicate spiraling lines. Some of it hung off of her arms and sides like fleshy ribbons. And her face. John dared not look at it a second time. He'd seen people die in Afghanistan. Explosive deaths, traumatic deaths, slow deaths, he's seen them all. But all of it seemed pale in comparison to the expression on her slashed up face.

Sherlock grinned, his eyes sparkling. The army doctor was suddenly very aware that the room he was in contained both a vampire and quite a lot of blood. He began to watch his flatmate's actions much more carefully. "Ooh, not at all. This... This is a painting."

"Painting? How?" Lestrade asked, although he was already beginning to see it. Sherlock was definitely one of those dramatic types. He had figured that out early on. The detective inspector was infinitely grateful that Sherlock preferred to solve murders than commit them."And how do you know it's a woman?"

"No man would call himself 'the muse'. Stop being boring. The murder is only a medium. A means to an end. Killing this girl was not her goal. Her goal was to create this scene. Look at the care she took in positioning the subject. The attention to detail in the line work. She even put in the effort to frame and sign it. This murderer is an artist," Sherlock purred before throwing himself entirely into studying the scene.

John was disgusted. It sounded like Sherlock was praising this 'muse' killer. He circled around the victim, taking in the sight like a connoisseur tasting wine. Looking at her as if the poor, unfortunate victim of this brutal act was nothing more than what the murderer had made her into. His eyes gleamed like the edge of a newly sharpened knife. He stalked around the small, clumsily decorated bedroom like a shadow, searching through everything but disturbing nothing. The harsh lights deepened the shadows of his face, the stark contrast making his pale face into something more than human. John was fascinated. And suddenly very aware that he was standing in a room with a vampire and quite a lot of blood.

He leaned closer to Lestrade. "Is it a good idea for him to be here. What with all the..."

The man shook his head, aging fifty years in a single breath. "... If anyone found out about this, I'd be out of a job. But we need him. All of the others would rather rip out their tongues than admit it, but we do. Without him, cases don't get solved in time, criminals escape and good people die. It's not pleasant, but... you... were talking about all the blood, weren't you."

"A bit, yeah."

He snickered. "Sherlock's a big boy. He can handle it." John didn't look entirely convinced. "Look, I've been around their kind for awhile. They consider it rude to go about killing randomly."

"John, you're a doctor. Tell me your opinion as a medical professional." Captain John Watson took a deep breath and curled his hands into fists. It took every ounce of his strength to step away from the edge of the room and walk into that ghastly tableau, but once he was in it, examining the body of the victim became as easy as breathing.

"She seems to have bled to death. None of the wounds are very deep, so it would've taken awhile. These marks left by the fishing line looks like she struggled while she was being tied up, so she was conscious for at least the beginning. But she didn't fight very hard, or the cuts would have been messier... The killer must have had some way to incapacitate her." The horror of knowing that his young woman was probably awake and aware for every cut and slice didn't hit him the way he expected. Mostly, it just seeped into his subconscious and waited for a more convenient time to make itself known.

Sherlock nodded approvingly at the doctor, his lips twisting into a sharp grin that put a shiver down John's spine.

He addressed the room in the same manner that an actor would address an audience. The harsh lights illuminating the scene only added to the dramatic effect, bleaching his skin bone white and deepening the shadows of his eye sockets and cheekbones."It was vital to the killer that she be conscious during the process, yes. But that's not what's important here. The killer obviously intended this to be a painting. So we must examine it as a painting. To find the artist, we must identify her signature."

Lestrade sighed at the man's theatrics. Sherlock always got to his point eventually, but Lestrade didn't have the patience to wait for it today. "Could we just... skip to the end?"

"The question we should be asking ourselves is 'why'. Why this girl? She isn't astonishingly beautiful, she's too young to have done anything of importance. She obviously wasn't very social. Why would our artist choose her as the subject of an art piece?" Lestrade considered the question. "...Maybe she was an easy target."

"There are a hundred people in this apartment complex who would have been easier to kill. Just next door, there's a blind old lady who has a bad habit of leaving her door unlocked."

John gaze landed on a photograph on the victim's bedside table. It was of her and what must have been her parents. She was smiling. "She looked so ordinary," he mumbled to himself, feeling distantly sorry for the parents.

Sherlock grinned, his eyes narrowing into needle sharp points. It occurred to John that he said something right, but he wasn't sure what it was.

"Lestrade, dig through this girl's history. Find out what she had in common with the other victims. Have the victim's laptop, notebooks and journals sent to baker street. Anything she might have written on. Oh, and email me the crime scene photos" Sherlock ordered the detective inspector, sweeping out of the room like a very well choreographed murder of crows leaving a cornfield.

"Other victims!?"

"You can't be serious." Sherlock groaned, turning back with all the insolence of a teenager. "look at the amount of detail. The precision. Do you think she was just born with that kind of talent? This killer's had practice. A lot of it." He pivoted away again, flipping his collar up as he began the trip down the stairs.

John pretended to ignore the searing glares the forensics team gave him as he followed. "Sherlock, what am I doing here?" John growled under his breath. A twinge of pain flared up in his thigh, like a grain of burning sand lodged between his thigh muscles.

Sherlock made a point of not answering him. "Are you hungry? I understand that noon is widely considered lunchtime among you mortals." He paused a few feet away from the front door to pull his scarf a little tighter and adjust his gloves. After rearranging a few curls of hair to cover his ears, he pulled open the door. "I know this little Italian place. Angelo's. The owner's been eager to repay a favor to me for years now."


	4. A Study in Scarlet (part 2)

Ella the Therapist always told John that he needed to be more in touch with his emotions. She recommended meditation or writing or just taking a couple of minutes to just sit and think about where he is mentally and spiritually. Whenever he tried those things, he found that the only emotion he was getting in touch with was a massive, crushing boredom.

But that wasn't the case now. John felt very much in touch with emotions. There were about... thirty of them, currently. Most of them were directed towards the brilliant, insane, possibly psychotic man sitting across the table from him. They all seemed to be varying shades of confusion, shock and .

"Basically, you brought me to a murder investigation as... a first date?" John asked incredulously over his gargantuan plate of lasagna. The owner of Angelo's, unsurprisingly named Angelo, was very eager to please. Perhaps a little too eager. He had kicked out another couple so they could have the window seat, repeatedly congratulated Sherlock for his 'fine catch' and was half a second away from hiring a violinist to 'set the mood' when Sherlock politely suggested that he piss off. It was... a bit awkward to say the least, considering John wasn't aware a romantic involvement was a part of the agreement (if they even had an agreement) and he wasn't even sure if he was into men, let alone vampires. But hey, the lasagna was excellent.

Sherlock grimaced at the wording of the question, as if the word 'date' physically injured him. "Dating is for mortals. I would never bother with anything so... frivolous."

"So what is this, exactly? Because I am... utterly lost."

The vampire hid behind a menu that John knew for a fact that he wasn't reading. The army doctor smirked around a mouthful of pasta. "I figured that..." Sherlock spoke slowly, choosing every word carefully. "since I got a taste of your life, it was only fair that you got a taste of mine."

"Oh. I get it now. All this business with the murder and the breakfast banquet and the... coat is you-"

"-my life, yes." He interrupted confidently, letting the menu fall to the table.

"... I was going to say 'you showing off'." John finished, stifling a smile when Sherlock mouthed an embarrassed 'oh' and suddenly became very interested in the menu. Again.

After a few minutes, he seemed to recover his confidence and leaned back in his chair, searching through his phone with all the leisurely elegance of a marble sculpture. "Don't gorge yourself, you'll want your wits about you. The day isn't over yet."

John paused as he sliced off another chunk of lasagna, the layers of soft pasta and thick sauce suddenly looking all too much like flayed skin. He pushed the plate aside and turned his attention to Sherlock. "What do you mean?" He prompted.

Sherlock's phone disappeared into a pocket as he leaned over the table. "Don't you find it a bit suspicious that most of the blood was still wet when we arrived?" His voice was low and quiet. John didn't hear him speak, so much as feel it vibrating through his skin.

"I... didn't really notice."

"Of course not. You're only human." He grinned, preening like an immortal cockatiel. "It takes roughly 1-2 hours for blood in that volume to dry completely, which means we arrived within the hour of her death. That makes it very possible that the killer alerted the police herself as soon as she was finished with her victim. She's proud, arrogant. She wants her work to be seen."

John gaped. "Tha- that means... She might still be in the area. She can't have gone very far in that amount of time." Suddenly, it felt very wrong to be sitting around chatting. He shoved his chair away from the table and began to stand, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"John. Sit down." It was more of a suggestion than a command. But it was the kind of suggestion one gave to someone about to step on a bomb. John complied. "You not seriously planning on just wandering the streets looking for some faceless, nameless woman, are you?" Sherlock looked amused, in a exasperated sort of way.

"... It seems better than just sitting around, yeah. Why, have you got a better idea?"

"Yes, if you'd just listen!" He hissed, baring his teeth with irritation.

"I'm all ears!"

"Good!" Sherlock collected himself with a sigh, scanning the rest of the room for signs of disturbance. "She was watching us at the crime scene. I couldn't be sure where, but I could smell fresh adrenaline in the air. I couldn't risk calling attention to her and driving her away, so I set a trap. Besides, it's more interesting this way."

"The praise. You praised her work so she'd follow us."

Sherlock didn't answer, only smiled approvingly at how quickly he caught on. "She'll need some time to change her clothes and google the address. I estimate... oh half an hour?"

"We're going to meet a murderer in half an hour." John tried very hard to be horrified. Terrified. Anything other that excited like a ten-year-old about to see disneyland.

"I doubt she'll come up to our table and introduce herself. She has gotten away with this before, after all." Sherlock caught the attention of a waiter and ordered a glass of wine. Red, with way too many syllables for John's budget. He nudged John's plate. "Eat. But slowly. We need to look like we're not waiting for her."

"Alright." John picked up his fork and picked at a fragment of pasta.

A glass of wine materialized on the table. "A little idle conversation might help also." He mumbled over the rim of the glass.

"So… how long have you been a vampire?" John asked the first thing that came to mind. It wasn't exactly the best choice for an attempt to act normal. But it was something.

Sherlock blinked. His mouth opened. "Roughly… 170 years?" He seemed just about as comfortable as a man trying to answer the question 'Why do you have a live animal in your rectum?'

"Oh. Wow. So how does that… happen exactly?" Sherlock didn't look any less confused. "How did you become a vampire?"

"I was born." Sherlock answered, fairly confident in his answer. "How else would one become a vampire?"

John lifted a bite of lasagna to his mouth, to give it something to do while he tried to think of something that wouldn't make him look like a total idiot. "Uhm.. Biting?"

Realization spread across Sherlock's face. "Oh. You've been reading those idiotic stories." He smirked, lifting his glass. "Do yourself a favor and don't assume to know anything about us. Vampirism isn't a virus, so much as a subspecies. All of those stories are ju-" He froze mid-sentence

"What? What is it?" John asked, although he suspected that he already knew the answer.

Sherlock grinned. "She's here. Act natural, but get ready to run."


	5. A Study in Scarlet (part 3)

She looked… surprisingly normal. Considering she had just killed a girl a few hours ago. She wore a bulky, oversized navy blue sweater with the hood pulled low over her face. From here, you could almost mistake the crusty, rust colored stains on her battered old jeans for paint.

John forced himself not to stare. His gaze flitted over his plate, the plastic flowers at the middle of the table. Finally, he fastened his eyes to Sherlock's. They were mint green, he noted with some surprise. He could've sworn they were grey… or maybe blue? Maybe they're contacts. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that they weren't the murderer currently settling into the booth a few feet away and he definitely shouldn't stare.

"...think it's rather astonishing, don't you agree?" John suddenly realized that the vampire had been talking the entire time.

"Uh… yeah. Definitely."

Sherlock made a facial movement which somehow meant 'I know, I can see her too', 'act as natural as you can manage', and 'follow my lead' all at the same time. "Frankly, I think it's a shame that we as a society have a compulsion to bury this side of ourselves. The urge to kill comes as natural as the urge to breed and survive. It's primal. Why should we live in shame of our natural urges? If it were up to me, The Muse would be on the front page of tomorrow's news." John tried not to look too sick as he nodded along with Sherlock's conversation. He knew it was a ruse, but he wore it so easily. That fascination in his eyes and the admiration in his voice couldn't all be fake, could it? And if it was that easy to fake such despicable behaviour, how could John ever know which parts of this strange creature were real? "She should be commended, praised. Not tossed in some cell to rot. It's a shame. An utter waste of talent."

"Hmm" John grunted conversationally around an imaginary bite of food.

"Are you feeling well?"

John did not feel well. He didn't think anyone sitting a few yards from a killer while listening to a vampire go on about the merits of killing would. But he nodded anyways. "Yeah. Fine."

"Are you sure? Because you look a little pale," Sherlock said slowly. Deliberately. As if hinting something to someone very thick.

John sighed. "Actually, I do feel a bit… queasy."

Sherlock pushed his chair back and adjusted his scarf. "It's about time we headed home. Lestrade's probably sent me those crime scene photos by now and I'd like to research some of the imagery used in this piece."

They walked out and down an unfamiliar street. At first, John thought it was a shortcut to baker street. But as they wandered further into increasingly more secluded and desolate areas, the more obvious it became that Sherlock had something else planned.

"How far behind us is she?" Sherlock mumbled from the corner of his mouth.

John glanced quickly behind them. There was a flash of navy blue behind a dumpster. "About… two yards."

"Don't let her slip past you." Without warning he disappeared down a narrow alley, leaving John startled and confused. He spun to find the murderer looking a bit like a deer caught in headlights. She darted off in the opposite direction and John, acting primarily on instinct, ran after her.

He wasn't a limping cripple anymore, but he wasn't exactly an athlete either. After a few minutes, the young woman seemed hopelessly out of reach.

Luckily, Sherlock was already waiting at the end of the alley. At the first sight of his unmistakable silhouette, she stopped and ran back towards John, apparently assuming that the smaller man would be easier to get past than the towering, imposing caricature of a man that was Sherlock Holmes. She was probably right, to an extent.

She tried to charge past John. He caught her around the neck at the last moment. She squirmed like an eel, but he wouldn't relent. For awhile, it almost seemed that he'd caught her. Then she pulled out a knife as sharp as a scalpel with a handle crusted with old blood. John didn't notice it until it sliced through his jumper. He drew back in shock and she was off like an arrow.

"Dammit John!" Sherlock grunted, shooting off after her. For what felt like hours, he ran just seconds behind the murderer and John ran just seconds after Sherlock. They weaved through dark alleys and across busy streets and through shortcuts. Every time the murderer vanished from sight, Sherlock would dart down a shadowed gap between buildings and they were just ahead of her.

John turned the next corner, chasing the end of Sherlock's fluttering coat.

A hand appeared out of nowhere and grabbing his shoulder. There was the smell of chloroform and then there was nothing.

He was taken away from the scene before he'd even thought to scream.


	6. A Kidnapping

When John next opened his eyes, he was at one end of an empty hall.

"John. Watson." A shadowy figure at the other end called out in precise, measured syllables, like a nurse calling you up for your examination. Or a demon in the waiting room of hell, calling you up for judgement.

Slowly, John's eyes adjusted to the dim light. He began to make out the shape of the man. Large and firmly built. Big boned. Like he had pillars and beams where his femurs and rib bones should be. His head stood on his shoulders like a strangely handsome gargoyle and his nose looked like it should've had a bird perched on it.

Slowly, he began walking toward the man. It seemed to be the only option available. He couldn't see anyone in the general vicinity but he had no doubt that those thugs were standing by, waiting for him to make a wrong move.

"That is your name, isn't it?" He smiled condescendingly, looking down his finely sculpted nose at the doctor. Most people would've said that to make sure they've remembered correctly or pronounced it right. The man said it as though he was afraid John had forgotten.

"...yes." John said through gritted teeth. "And you are?"

The man ignored the question entirely. "I understand that you've come into acquaintance with a… 'man' named Sherlock Holmes."

"I… don't see how that's any of your business."

"Oh, you'll find it is very much my business." His smile dropped. John found himself actually missing it. "All creatures such as him are my business. In fact, the reason I brought you here today was to make a sort of… proposal. I'm not asking for anything too strenuous, nothing you'd be uncomfortable with. Just some information. His habits, hobbies, routines. And of course a little discretion."

John, who felt more or less constantly out of his depth as of late, understood completely. "And why would I want to do that?"

"Because, if you comply, you'll find the rewards rather... generous." The smile was back. John was suspicious that this 'reward' would end up being something like 'the continued use of all your limbs'. "And if you don't, I'm sure you'll come to regret the consequences."

John laughed. It was as if he had walked into a cheesy spy movie. He was tempted to ask the man if he owned a white cat. "Is that a threat?"

"Think of it as advice." He flexed his fingers around the ivory handle of his cane as he considered his next words. "These creatures... they're not like us. They've preyed on humankind from the shadows for centuries. Preying on the lost, lonely and desperate. Luring them in with their beauty, promises of money, security and your heart's desire. Tell me, has he told you that he'll do _anything_ to please you? Or has he found a different line?"

It was ridiculous. Outlandish. Like something out of a penny dreadful. The scary part was, he was beginning to make sense. "That is _definitely _not your business."

He turned, wondering which one of the eerily glowing doors lining the hall was the exit.

"He's killed before." The man mentioned casually, just as John spotted an exit sign. John sighed."Or haven't you noticed the human skull displayed so proudly on his mantlepiece?"

The man nonchalantly brushed the dust from the sleeve of his crisp, perfectly tailored (if not a little old-fashioned) suit. "I trust you're not looking forward to keeping him company. The skull, that is. Not the vampire. Although, I've heard the vampire isn't exactly what you'd call companionable, either."

"Why." John took a step closer. "Do you." He took another. "Care." He came close enough to see the dignified, floral pattern of the man's brocaded waistcoat. Close enough to give him a clean punch to the nose, should the occasion arise. He came no closer. He smiled a mad, dangerous grin. "What could you possibly have to gain by... this."

"Just watching out for a fellow human." His mouth contorted into some strange parody of a compassionate smile. John let out a mad, dangerous laugh. The smile melted into a more honest emotionless mask. "As I said before. Business. I hunt the hunters and sell those who would enslave us. I make sure that such monstrosities as vampires and werewolves and demons stay the stuff of legends and keep the underworld underfoot. It's quite a profitable occupation, if you're interested."

John laughed again. "I don't think so. Now, if you don't mind, I was in the middle of catching a murderer when you kidnapped me. And I'd very much like to get back to it."

"So be it. Anthea." A woman slipped silently out of the door nearest to him. She moved with a quiet grace. Like a shark, drifting silently through the depths of the ocean.

"This way," She commanded quietly without even glancing at John. She floated towards a door that was entirely identical to the others.

"And John." The man called out as he trailed after Anthea. "If you're in ever interested in taking another murderer off the streets. I'll be in touch."

John didn't answer. He didn't turn. He just kept walking.

* * *

Somewhere in London, a phone rang.

"Yes?" A bored voice murmured into it.

"And did he take it?"

The voice hummed, disappointed. "Pity. He would've made the perfect toy. No matter."

"They always break anyways." a set of pale, slender fingers brushed the bald ivory brow of a grinning skull. "Eventually."


	7. In the Night

John came home feeling like he got hit by truck. The adrenaline rush of the day had drained down to an oppressive exhaustion. His limbs felt heavy and numb, his limp was making a slow but sure come-back and the gash in his arm was making itself known. But what irritated him most at the moment was that his jumper and shirt were both ruined and he didn't exactly have the budget to spare them.

221b looked deserted when he entered. He figured Mrs. Hudson had already gone to bed and Sherlock was still off chasing that murderer. A worry nagged at the back of his exhausted mind, but he ignored it in favor of tackling the gargantuan task of hiking the staircase. It was by far the most daunting task of the day.

By the time he collapsed into his bed, he distantly hoped that he wouldn't ever wake up. Because he knew that when he did, he would be so sore and the wound that he hadn't the energy to treat would probably be infected.

He woke up to the feeling of something looming over him in the pitch black darkness. In his semi-conscious and thoroughly spent state, this seemed only a little odd.

"John," Sherlock rumbled, purring from where he perched on John's stomach like a giant cat. A set of marble-cold fingertips brushed his cheek. It felt fundamentally wrong, like touching a sculpture in a museum. "You disappeared during the chase. Why?"

"I was kidnapped." He explained simply, as if there was anything simple about it. "... Why are you on top of me?"

"Of course. I didn't think you were the type to run at the first sight of danger." Sherlock sighed, more relieved than concerned. He lifted John's injured arm. John tried to pull it out of his grasp but it was useless. He couldn't tell if it was Sherlock's strength or his own exhaustion that made the act seem effortless. There was a tearing noise as the sleeve of his ruined jumper was stripped away. John felt a set of fingertips, or it might have been a nose, brush against the open flesh of his wound. "I can fix this if you let me."

"It's fine. Just let me sleep." He tried to jerk his arm back into his own possession again and failed.

"It's causing you pain. It doesn't look very clean. Might even get infected." A cold breath fluttered through his arm hair. That was definitely a nose. "Please, let me help."

John wondered drowsily how Sherlock could see anything in the utter darkness of the room. But the matter immediately resolved itself as a weird vampire thing. "If I do, will you let me sleep?"

"Yes." John mumbled something that sound almost like 'do what you like'. Sherlock hummed, deep and low. It filled the room like a finger circling a wineglass. John winced as something wet swiped across his wound. He felt himself begin to drift off when the vampire began to speak again in between licks. "It's not exactly good manners, this. Taking your blood from the flesh so soon after we've met." The stinging pain of the wound faded quickly until it felt as fuzzy as his head did. It occurred to him that he should be remembering something important. Something about danger. But it drifted away as he fell further asleep. "But your flesh is already broken. And it's less polite to let it fester."

He was hardly conscious enough to feel Sherlock's mouth wander down his forearm to his hand, sucking and licking the skin clean. "Hmm. It should be a crime to let your blood go to waste. If that accursed knife hadn't already been admitted to evidence, I'd suck the dried blood off it's edge." He locked his mouth around the soldier's wrist, irreverantly pressing his teeth into the delicate flesh. Not hard enough to break the skin, just to feel the heat of him against his tongue. "Ooh, if that damn painter didn't have a death sentence in her future, I'd kill her myself."

John was dead to the world when Sherlock placed his arm back onto his chest. "That was a bit much, wasn't it?" He apologized bashfully to the sleeping man, carefully tracing the fine lines surrounding the edge of his ocular orbit with his fingertips, thumb trailing against his zygomatic bone. "I don't exactly have the largest frame of reference. But..."

He smiled shyly in the dark as he stepped out of John's bed. "Goodnight."


	8. The Morning After

John woke up to the sound of violin music seeping up through the floor, thick and raw like honey right off the comb. He moved to haul himself out of bed and immediately regretted it. His muscles felt like rubber bands all stretched to their limits over a bonfire. The early morning light bypassed his eyeballs entirely and burn straight through the back of his skull. It felt like his second day of bootcamp all over again, except this time around he was trapped in the body of a useless, broken old man.

He wanted to lie in bed and cry until life got the hint and left him the fuck alone. But his bladder demanded that he get up, grow a pair and take long, hard piss. His stomach agreed, provided they grab a bite on the way. He begrudgingly admitted that they were right and hauled himself out of bed.

"Sleep well?" Sherlock asked as John picked up his morning cup of tea from the kitchen table, where it sat every morning. The vampire was dressed in the same suit he wore yesterday. He still smelled faintly of italian restuarant and blood. A violin perched on his shoulder like he was born with it. He looked fresh as a daisy in a detergent commercial and John hated it.

"Very well. Woke up badly." He grunted as he sipped at his tea. A little cold, but still excellent. The taste of it sunk into his system like an internal massage. He took a seat at the kitchen table. "Are you one of those people who own fifteen of the same outfit? Because there's no way you slept in that."

Sherlock smiled mysteriously. John considered how mysterious it would look with four or five teeth missing. He set aside the violin and sat down in his armchair. "Didn't sleep. How's your arm?"

"Sore." He mumbled into his mug. After a second's consideration, he re-thought the question. Shouldn't it be a little more than sore? He raised his arm to take a look at it. There was still a slash on his forearm. Not terribly deep, but at least five inches long. John didn't have much of a chance to look at it the night before, but he was sure it hadn't healed half-way on it's own in the last 12 hours. He vaguely remembered the feel of something wet and cold. "Fine, actually. Did you… do something to it? While I was asleep?"

"Yes, I did." Sherlock stood to casually fiddle with his sheet music. Or at least, a stage actor's idea of casual. "Although, I don't think you were exactly _entirely_ conscious at the time."

John sighed and took a long sip of his tea to buy himself a little time to sort through his patchy memory. "You do understand that it's... not very good to sneak into someone's room and do things to them while they're asleep, right?"

Sherlock scoffed. "I'm not a complete imbecile, John. Let me remind you that you did, in fact, give me permission. And it's not as if I did anything unseemly to-"

"Sherlock, calm down. I'm not angry with you." John tried diffusing the froth Sherlock was working himself into. Luckily, he deflated pretty quickly. "Actually, I'm glad you did... whatever you did. I'm just saying, next time try knocking."

"Uh. Yes, well..." The words staggered out of his mouth, bashfully. "Next time we're chasing a serial killer, you could try a little harder not to get kidnapped."

John snickered as Mrs. Hudson swept in with breakfast. "Finished another case so soon, Sherlock? I was sure you'd be taking it easy." She chattered pleasantly as she laid out a plate of bacon and eggs.

"I was. That case was simplicity itself. When the crime scene is that flashy, the murderer is usually more than happy to hand themselves in. Or they get caught up in the theatrics and get sloppy covering their tracks." Sherlock sighed, leaning back in his armchair. He picked up his bow and began to leisurely stroke it across a well-used block of rosin. "Either way, I thought it'd be a nice, relaxing way to spend the evening."

John shot him an incredulous glance. He was considering the possibility that perhaps the words 'nice' and 'relaxing' meant something different in his language.

"Well... maybe relaxing isn't _quite_ the right word." Sherlock conceded.

"No, dear. It is not." Mrs. Hudson cooed gently, flitting into the living room to set a bowl of fresh fruit on top of the pile of clutter on top of the coffee table. She quickly swooped around Sherlock's chair to peck a kiss on his cheek. "But I'm glad you enjoyed yourself."

Sherlock took a moment to preen before lifting his violin back up to his chin to play a light, fluffy melody. John shook his head in amusement and finished his breakfast in a contented, music induced haze. The events of yesterday floated through his mind like the memory of a dream. Setting up elaborate traps, sprinting through dark alleyways, being kidnapped by strange men spouting stranger warnings. How could it be anything but a dream?

He considered the strange man and his warnings/threats/accusations. His well-manicured words drifting through John's mind as he glanced up at the skull grinning down at him from the mantlepiece. It suddenly occurred to him that the odd piece of decor was a bit… small. "Sherlock."

He hummed his acknowledgement over his violin.

"The man who kidnapped me. He said a lot of… stuff. About you. And well… I was just wondering…"

The violin music faded. Sherlock squinted at John inquisitively, but said nothing.

"Is that skull real?" He attempted to make it sound casual. Just a passing curiosity. But he knew at this point he had a better chance at making his bacon regenerate into a living pig and fly out the window.

The violin let out an ungodly shriek as Sherlock pulled the bow in a harsh downstroke. He set them both aside and stood with a growl, his face pulled into a grimace of severe distaste. "I need to make a call."

He swept out of the room without another word.


	9. Family is Forever

John only saw glimpses of his vampire flatmate for the next four days. Whenever he'd walk into a room, he'd find Sherlock just leaving it. Whenever he left, he'd hear Sherlock's bedroom door open on his way out. Once, he'd gotten so frustrated with the ridiculous tactics that he broke into Sherlock's bedroom only to find that he had vanished entirely.

"Don't mind him. He can be as skittish as a cat, but he'll warm up to you." Mrs. Hudson reassured him from the sofa, with a nostalgic smile lazily resting on the rim of her favorite teacup. "I remember when he first moved in. He wouldn't unpack his bags for a month because he was convinced I'd change my mind."

John huffed a laugh and looked around the flat. The place was like a bird's nest. Lovingly constructed out of random crap and bodily fluids. He couldn't imagine what it would've looked like empty.

"That's the thing about Vampires. They've got wisdom and power and beauty spanning the centuries, but with it comes an awkward adolescent phase several generations long." She chuckled in that light, airy way of hers that instantly eliminated any trace of weight which could've been in her words. John never really paid much attention to Mrs. Hudson. She had always been the nice old lady who seemed exactly like the grandmother everyone is convinced everyone else has. But now he found himself wondering exactly how she got herself caught up in this mess.

"I'll keep that in mind." John gave her the polite smile he reserved specifically for the elderly. "Well. This has been lovely. But I've got to go."

"Oh? Where to?" Mrs. Hudson asked with a distant, foggy smile.

"Job interview, actually. At the nearby clinic." He straightened his best shirt and checked his hair in the mirror. Both were about the same as they ever were which suited him just as well as it ever had.

He left with Mrs. Hudson chirping a kindly "Good luck!" After him.

Outside, he spotted the end of Sherlock's dressing gown disappearing through the open window.

It had gone... Well. Really well, actually. His future job was bound to pay... maybe not enough to make him rich. But an actual paycheck would be a nice change in pace. His future employer was attractive and attracted to him, which might make things more complicated professionally. But John certainly didn't mind a little complexity in his life.

And then he came home.

From the second he walked into the flat, he could feel the tension. It was like the air was stretched tight like a thousand bowstrings. John opened the door slowly, gently. As if doing otherwise would end with an arrow through his eye socket.

In the living room, Sherlock stood in front of the fireplace, his tightly drawn face reflected in the mirror. His burgundy dressing gown billowed around his ankles, revealing that he had just finished a round of pacing.

"You can't seriously expect me to believe that you _care, _do you?" Sherlock spat angrily, his face contorting into a sarcastic grimace. He pivoted in John's direction. John opened his mouth to speak, but his brain hadn't yet .

Luckily, a different voice spoke for him. "You are my brother, Sherlock. Whether either of us like it or not, it is my duty to care." A carefully measured voice intoned lazily from the couch. The man who owned sat on the couch as if they had both been sculpted out of the same block of marble. His feet were spread at just the right angle to invoke a sense of regality and both of his hands rested masterfully on the handle of his umbrella. It was his kidnapper.

"Duty, of course. How could I have forgotten your unconditional devotion to saving your fat arse from mummy's wra-" Sherlock's jaw snapped shut and his dramatically sarcastic flourishes came to a sudden halt. It was then that he noticed John standing at the door.

"John." He said, his hands snapping to his sides. There was a buzzing silence as Sherlock tried to find the answers to the hundreds of questions John was undoubtedly about to ask. "Uh- this is my brother, Mycroft.

John imagined he could hear the sound of stones grinding together as Mycroft turned his head in his direction. "Such a pleasure to meet you again, John."

"You're the bastard who kidnapped me." Mycroft eyelids fluttered innocently, as though he were merely caught in a some silly misunderstanding, rather than accused of a kidnapping

"He does that. Terrible social skills." Sherlock shot a biting smirk at his brother who returned it with a scowl.

"I don't lead a very social life." He explained with some parody of humility.

Sherlock crinkled his eyebrow at Mycroft. "You mean sucking off politicians in the loo _doesn't _count as socializing? Who knew."

"Wait wait wait. No. Stop." John interjected, interrupting the bout of childish squabbling. "He kidnapped me. Threatened me. Threatened you. And now he's having tea on our sofa…. Excuse me if I feel like I'm missing something."

"Threatened _me_?" He asked incredulously, ignoring John's concerns entirely. "No, actually that does sound about right, considering he's also terrible brother." He flopped into his chair, earning a monumental eye-roll from said brother.

"I didn't threaten anybody," denied Mycroft, calmly extracting a watch from his pocket. It was one of those solid gold heirloom types which was probably worth more than John's life. He flipped it open with practiced ease.

"So all of that talk about 'hunting the hunters' was just… what. A friendly hello?"

"It was a ridiculous attempt to scare you off." Sherlock answered for his brother, making no attempt at disguising his disgust towards the idea. "My dear brother is under the assumption that no one would willingly come in contact with me unless they're secretly out to sell me on the black market."

Mycroft snapped his pocketwatch shut with a click like teeth on bone. "Ignore my brother, he has the absolute worst opinion of me."

John snorted. "I can't imagine why."

The enormous man ignored the comment with the ease of someone who's had centuries of practice. "It was a test. There are many… unsavoury individuals who would give up their firstborn child for any of our heads- attached or otherwise- and many others who would risk death to profit off of that. If you were to continue... _associating _ with Sherlock, I needed to be sure of the quality of your moral fiber."

John did not like the way Mycroft made the word 'associating' sound like some perverted act.

Sherlock lept out of his seat like a salmon in dolce and gabbana and resumed pacing in circles around the room. "For god's sake, Mycroft. You act like I haven't grown my fangs in yet. I AM A DETECTIVE. I can smell a murderer a mile off. Last week I took down a human trafficking ring _while _I was catching a thief. I don't need you watching over my shoulder like a bloody nanny."

"Hunters are not your common cutthroats, Sherlock. You know that. They've ensnared vampires older and wiser than you. With your proclivity towards reckless self-endangerment and refusal to take the necessary precautions, I'm surprised you're not already some mortal's expensive toy."

John stepped between the two, forcing them both to acknowledge his presence for more than a few seconds. "So... you're saying vampire hunters exist."

"Rather slow on the uptake, isn't he?" Mycroft smiled punchably. "Then again, I suppose that is your taste."

"Yes." Sherlock answered John, ignoring Mycroft with a quiet fury.

"And this guy is _not _a vampire hunter."

Sherlock considered the question, as a shakespearean actor would consider the words 'to be or not to be'. Mycroft prepared himself for a truly historic eye-roll. "...Probably not."

"Oh for god's sake!" Mycroft exclaimed in frustration. A pair of fangs, like twin cathedral spires, jutted out from his grimace. "I occupy a minor position in the british government. One of the many duties of which is to monitor the black market.."

"Which, in a way, makes him a vampire hunter hunter." Mused Sherlock, settling back into his chair. "Or- because he's also a vampire- a vampire vampire hunter hunter. Or- simplified mathematically- a vampire hunter squared."

"Yes, yes. Very funny, little brother." Mycroft hauled himself up with all the haste of a glacier. "Well, this was lovely, boys. But I'm afraid I must be making my departure."

"Try not to kidnap Mrs. Hudson on the way out. I'd hate for her to burn her brownies." Sherlock sighed as Mycroft swept out of the room, umbrella and all.

John fell into his chair in relief, melting into the overstuffed piece of furniture as he toed off his shoes. "Is all your family like that?"

"More or less." The vampire said enigmatically. "You still thought he was going to kidnap me even after you knew he was my brother." He stated, with an amused sort of confusion.

"Yes, well. I've got a sister who'd sell me for six pack and half a tuna sandwich." John chuckled, only half joking. "Why've you been avoiding me lately? Is it just because I asked about the skull?"

"You mortals never understand." Sherlock made an attempt at condescension but in the end it just sounded sad.

"I'm getting pretty tired of the 'you mere mortals' act. I'm sure I'd understand more than you think. I mean, it's not as if you murdered it." The vampire looked suddenly sullen. "You didn't murder it, right?"

"No. And _it's_ name is Victor, by the way." He barked in a burst of annoyance. "He was murdered. Mugged and gutted by a common thief. I found his body in a cold alleyway. It wasn't the way he was supposed to go."

The air was thick with stories untold. Most didn't need telling. "I'm sorry," were the only words John could think to say.


	10. Ask a Glass of Water

John began to observe his flatmate a little more closely during their interactions and so discovered a few things which he never really thought about before.

The first of which being that Sherlock drank a surprising amount of non-blood fluids. And not just surprising for a vampire. John was sure people living in the desert with raging colds didn't drink half so much fluid as he did. There were times when he'd walk into the kitchen to find Sherlock chugging an entire gallon of milk.

The second thing John noticed was that Sherlock didn't seem to have any trace of a gag reflex. He tried not to dwell on this too much.

The third was that his vampire flatmate spent a suspicious amount of time with the police detective named Lestrade. Every few weeks or so, he'd come by and visit. Sometimes he'd have a file for Sherlock to puzzle over, but usually he didn't. Every time, they'd both disappear into Sherlock's bedroom for hours. After which Lestrade would stumble out with rumpled clothing and strangely bright eyes and Sherlock would spend the rest of the day in a hazy cloud of self-satisfaction.

John was sure he knew what went on between them. But his mind refused to let it go.

The detective was sitting at the kitchen table after one of these strange rendezvous, looking gray and foggy like dawn breaking in a forest carpeted with autumn leaves. He had a glass of orange juice firmly clasped between both of his hands, as if he were afraid it'd escape. "Afternoon." He mumbled amiably.

"It's nine o'clock." Corrected John as he pulled a carton of leftover chinese out of the fridge.

"Oh." Lestrade glanced at the darkened windows with surprise. "So it is. Funny how that happens."

"Time?" John chuckled, picking at his possibly expired orange chicken.

"That too." Lestrade smirked over the rim of his glass of orange juice. He lowered the glass, squinting philosophically at the pulpy fluid "It's like… coming out of a cinema to find that half your day is over. And it didn't feel at all like that much time had passed."

"Hm…" John nodded thoughtfully around a bite of definitively expired orange chicken. He discreetly spit it back into it's carton. "So, you and Sherlock."

"The hundred year old toddler, yeah."

"Are you two…" John fumbled for the least awkward euphemism. "Together?"

Lestrade stared at the space between them, as if pondering the history and evolution of the term 'together'. "No. I'm married." John noticed that Lestrade's eyes weren't glazed over or unfocused like one might have expected, but bright and alert. Almost too alert. "Why would you assume that?"

"You two disappear into his room for hours…. You come out looking like- uh. That. It's kind of difficult not to." John muttered awkwardly, pushing the carton of expired orange chicken to the side.

"Oh… yeah." Lestrade cringed. "I just feed him. I never actually realized what it looked like."

John chuckled to relieve the tension in the room. "So this is all the blood loss?"

"Nah, he only took maybe half a cup. This is all the vampire saliva." He said, carefully lowering his glass to the table like it might jump up and bite him.

"Hm. I didn't realize it took that long."

"It doesn't. No, the actual bloodletting only takes a few minutes." Lestrade picked up the sports section of the newspaper with all the methodical caution of a brain surgeon and eased his chair back to read it. "The rest is just watching Sherlock sleep and hoping he'll roll off my arm before it falls off."

John wasn't sure exactly what to make of that. So he got up and rummaged about the fridge, despite the fact that he knew there was nothing in it.

Lestrade laughed humorlessly behind him. "I just realized something." he said, with the air of a man waking up in a jail cell, remembering he's on death row. "I don't think I'm going to be married for much longer."

"Oh? Why would you say that?" John asked sympathetically.

"Partly because of my secret life as a blood servant to a family of ancient supernatural beings. Partly because of my dedication to my demanding and very dangerous career. And I'm not going to pretend our declining sex life has nothing to do with it. But.. mostly because I keep running off to the flat of a gorgeous young man and coming back hours later looking dazed and happy." He laughed at his own tragic joke, gingerly setting the newspaper aside.

"Sorry to hear that." John mumbled, sitting back down to console his roommate's main course.

Lestrade shook his head like he was afraid his head might fall off. "I don't blame her. I might as well have been cheating on her for all these years, what with all of the secrets I've been keeping from her. And Sherlock, god. We're not... like that. But I've put more effort into caring for that needy bastard than my own daughter." There was a pause

"Sorry. You didn't need to hear that... -it's the vampire saliva. Effects everyone differently, but it makes me a soppy idiot."

"No, it's... fine. Do you know how many times I've drunkenly sobbed about my first girlfriend to whoever happened to be at the bar?" Lestrade shook his head with a morose chuckle. "Yeah, well neither do I."

Lestrade took another thoughtful sip of orange juice.

"What's it… like? I mean, if it's not too much information. I assume it's not _quite_ like getting your blood drawn."

Lestrade sighed, the way people do when they've answered a question too many times and still don't know the correct answer. "Different people have different experiences. Some say it's almost religious, others say it's like drugs. There's a whole cult of freaks who see it as erotic. And of course, every vampire is different too. But mainly it's like being drunk."


	11. The Game Called Life

John himself writing on his blog a lot lately. Which he found fairly surprising, considering he had the poetic skill of a heavily concussed twelve year old. But he found it actually was a fairly therapeutic way of dealing with the frankly bizarre events that occurred on a daily basis. Granted, he couldn't post any of the really interesting (read: batshit insane) happenings for two reasons:

1) No one would believe anything he said.

2) His therapist had enough ideas about the state of his psyche without him ranting about his vampiric roommate's rivalry with his overbearing older brother who happened to own most of london.

But he didn't mind that terribly as he had plenty of material to write about even after subtracting the borderline supernatural elements. Just the other day, a man broke into the flat and threatened them with a fire extinguisher. The strange thing was, he didn't demand money or valuables. He wanted them to solve the disappearance of his wife and clear up the suspicion surrounding him. Of course, John wasn't too keen on helping a man who was currently holding hostage at the business end of a fire extinguisher, but Sherlock was so intrigued by the case that he didn't even charge him for solving it, let alone destroying a window and terrifying the wits out of Mrs. Hudson.

'_Actually,' _John typed out. '_he did pay in the end. Mrs. Hudson picked his wallet when he dropped by to thank Sherlock.'_

"Are you aware that you have the typing skills of a dyslexic pidgeon?" Sherlock groaned as he sprawled across the couch. Unfortunately, that particular mystery had turned out to be too boring to please Sherlock. John didn't understand how a break-in followed by a missing person's case which actually turned out to be a case of long-term burglary could be boring. But he didn't understand many things these days.

John smirked to himself. "If you don't want to listen to me typing, you can go somewhere else."

Sherlock responded by rolling towards the back of the couch and folding a pillow over his head.

'_In other news, I went out to see a movie with Sara from work.' _Sherlock moaned pitifully into the sofa cushions. '_She's really quite nice.'_

"God, I can feel the senseless noise that is your mortal life eating away at my mind." He groaned dramatically, flopping onto his back again.

John was about to peck out some quip about plotting the murder of his flatmate when the door burst open. Lestrade rushed in like blessed rain after a drought.

"Kidnapped children. Hostage situation. I'll give you the details on the way." John stood immediately, grabbing his jacket on the way to the door. Sherlock languorously stood with all of the haste of a lazy sunday afternoon and made his way to his bedroom.

Lestrade was gawped, still panting from running up the stairs. "Where are you going?"

"Well, I'm hardly going to run about london in my dressing gown, am I?" He retorted over his shoulder.

"I don't care if you go out starkers! I don't have time for this. _They _don't have time-."

"Yes, we do." Sherlock said with a confident smirk. "We've got all the time in the world."

Lestrade charged towards him, temper blazing. Sherlock stepped to the side, missing a fist to the head by a mile. He still seems surprised for it. "I swear to god, Sherlock. If this is another childish game of yours I'll-"

"It's definitely a game, but it's not mine. Hostage situations. It's a desperate act, committed by desperate idiots who don't know what they're doing. They're very much like dogs. They bark because they're scared but they won't actually bite. They're not prepared to take a life. It doesn't matter what demands they make or how little time they say you have, they don't want to do it. Even if they're psychopaths, they're not going to get rid of their only bargaining chips." Sherlock reasoned, as though calming a panicked horse. Lestrade nodded, but his expression still burned with doubt. "When an annoying lap dog yaps at your ankles, acting scared only gives it power. The more you panic, the less control you have over the situation. So if you'll excuse me, I need to get dressed."

"Fine." Lestrade conceded, stepping out of the way. "But if you're wrong and one of them dies I'll-... you'll never feel my warmth again."

That seemed to ruffle Sherlock's feathers, but only briefly.

"I'm not." He stated confidently as he disappeared into his room.


	12. The Game Called Life (part 2)

They met the kidnappers about 15 minutes later in the back seat of Lestrade's car. They were communicating through an intricate series of videos uploaded to youtube from an undisclosed location. The detective and the doctor were quickly shown the first few videos, all of a man in a black ski mask but occasionally featuring a pair of twin girls. Nothing could be clearly distinguished from any of the videos except the girls. They were displayed like jewelry in a window. Always well-lit and posed.

"They've been coming in every half hour. There have been 4 so far. An anonymous caller directed us to them. The girls are Meiko and Hoshi Miyamoto, the children of a wealthy japanese novelist stolen from their home. He's made all the standard demands, cash and two plane tickets to cuba or the kids die. We can't get any specifics off of the video. He's using a voice changer. The background never changes. Long story short, we could really use your help." Lestrade instantly reverted to his Detective Inspector voice, stating the facts without letting the emotion of the situation suffocate him.

"The parents." Sherlock played the latest video over again. Watching intently as a voice off screen spoke of how well-mannered the obviously terrified children were. "How much trouble will they be?"

"We've been unable to contact the father. The mother's been dead for four years."

"Perfect." Sherlock replayed the segment for the third time. The light of the screen cast a cold light across his face, shifting his eye color from pale to lifeless. John shivered as the gravelly artificial voice echoed through the hollow space as he knew it'd echo through his skull for months afterward. "Check the father's background. Try to track him down. It's not uncommon for the children of the wealthy to be left to the care of a nanny. But in cases such as these, inside jobs are always most likely. Investigate the staff too. Just tutors and nannies, the rest would be a waste of time."

"Done and done. All of the staff check out. They all say the same things, the father is away a lot but he loves the girls dearly. No less than two video chats a day, plus phone calls and letters and postcards. The nanny claimed she thinks of them as her baby sisters. The tutors were frantic. None of them knew where the father could be or who could've done it."

Sherlock hummed, hitting the replay button on the video.

"Did you find something?" John asked stiffly, getting irritated with hearing the same line over and over again.

"Can you hear that in the background?" Sherlock cupped his hand around the speaker to amplify it and replayed the segment. "It's constant throughout all the videos, but it's most detectable in the pause between sentences right... here."

John caught it, just a subtle hum in the space between words. The sound was like a hummingbird's song, once he caught on to it he couldn't believe that he'd ever missed it. Sherlock tapped back to the first video and he heard it there too. Softer, lower, but unmistakable. "What is that?"

"I can't hear a thing." Lestrade grumbled from the driver's seat as they pulled into the scotland yard parking garage. "Maybe it's the a/c running or something."

"I've got a bad feeling about it." Sherlock mumbled, swinging out of the car before it came to a full stop. "The first thing we'll do is run it through your audio processing program."

They spent no less than five minutes uploading the audio from all four videos into the program, isolating the background noise from the kidnapper's voice and amplifying it. Then it became clear that it wasn't only one sound, it was two. One a fraction higher in pitch than the other. They fluctuated subtly, the pitch and volume shifting seemingly without cause or pattern.

It seemed to disturb everyone in the room, but it petrified Sherlock.

"That sounds like... but- it can't be," mumbled Lestrade, looking more confused than anything.

"It is," replied Sherlock suddenly gasping and frantic. "This case just got 30% more complicated." Usually, Sherlock would be delighted at that fact. Positively, disgustingly glowing. But this time it seemed to terrify him.

"What? What am I missing?" John asked,

"That's what vampire children sound like when scared out of their wits." Sherlock informed him, pulling out his phone and tapping out a text message at the speed of light. "Lestrade. Photo of the father."

"They're vampires. What does that mean? Where they… targeted or something?" John asked as Lestrade handed over a file.

Sherlock huffed out a humourless laugh as he leaned over the file, snapping a picture of the photo attached to a sheet of background information. "The kidnapper hasn't a clue. If he did, he'd have sold them off and we'd never hear a word about it. Vampire children are extremely rare and therefore unspeakably valuable." Sherlock began pacing across the floor, thinking frantically. "There must be something you've missed. Something that will lead us to them. But that could be anything."

"Sherlock." John stepped in his path, forcing him to stop and look up. "If he didn't know they were vampires, then why would he steal them?"

"Why does anyone kidnap children? Desperation." Sherlock said instantly, almost instinctually.

If anything, that answer baffled John further. "But… what would make someone desperate enough to break into a secured mansion full of staff and kidnap a couple of kids?"

That question seemed to knock Sherlock off balance. "A vampire's home would have more security precautions than the average household, especially with children… The staff wouldn't be your average disgruntled workers. They'd be blood servants, all with an intimate knowledge of vampiric tradition. They'd have to be on the inside, but not close enough to be let in on the secrets of vampirism."

"Relatives of the staff?" Suggested John with a shrug?

Lestrade shook his head. "Either an individual disconnects from their family to enter into service or they're raised in a family of blood servants."

John made a conscious effort not to read too far into that.

"OH!" Sherlock shouted, in a moment of ecstatic realization. "Two plane tickets!"

"What?" Lestrade asked, though they thought it in unison.

"The kidnapper asked for two plane tickets to cuba. Who would he choose to whisk off to cuba to start a new life with? Not a relative. Certainly not just any friend."

John knew the answer was obvious, but he stated it anyways. Just to make it real. "A girlfriend."


	13. The Game Called Life (part 3)

Some days, John's afraid he was born with a bullet in his mouth. That, no matter how long or full a life he might lead, in the end the only outcome could be a pointless, painful death. While that might also be true for the rest of humanity, it seemed to be most relevant to John.

And it was moments like these, when he was caught unarmed between a criminal with a gun and an ancient supernatural being from the deepest depths of legend in an abandoned house where two kids were being held captive, that the feeling became most prominent.

"You don't have to do this, Miyamoto." Sherlock told the raging vampire in the doorway, his back to the masked man with the gun. John just glared at the shaking kidnapper, daring him to shoot. There wasn't much he could do as he had no weapons more potent than his bare hands, but he'd be damned if he went down without at least landing a punch. "You don't want his blood on your hands."

John risked a glance behind him. The father of the kidnapped children looked rather normal. His hair was just barely starting to grey and his face was lined from years of kindly smiles. Circumstances aside, he seemed like he could've been a reasonable man. Except now there was murder in his eyes and John severely doubted a nice conversation would help much. The room was filled with the dizzying harmonies of the kidnapped children's fear and their father's anger. The sound wasn't at all like it was on the videos. It was strong and pure, less like a hum and more like a finger pulled around the rim of a crystal glass in the center of an amphitheater. It seemed to have an effect on everyone in the room. The kidnapper was shaking so hard, John feared he might either liquify on the spot or have a muscle spasm and pull the trigger on accident. The army doctor manage to hold himself together, but it was taking a significant amount of effort to ignore the sway of the room. Sherlock stood against it like a cliff against a raging storm.

"You are right. I will not get it on my hands." The vampire growled above the tension in the room. His japanese accent bleeding through, adding extra syllables to the words. "I'll drain his filthy blood onto the streets."

"Think, Miyamoto. The police are on their way. Your daughters are in the room. The best outcome you can hope for is lengthy trial for you and deep emotional scars for your children. At worst, you'll be put in jail and they'll be put in someone else's care. Would one moment's revenge really be worth never seeing them again?" Sherlock's reasoning fell on deaf ears. The man was blind with fury. John's gaze shifted from the kidnapper to the scared kids tied up behind him. Their eyes were red from sobbing, but they seemed otherwise unharmed.

"He stole my children. They are all I have left of her."

Sherlock scoffed, gesturing towards the kidnapper. "Look at the bastard. Shaking, hiding behind a toy gun. He only did all this because his girlfriend broke up with him. Ending his life would be a mercy he does not deserve."

"It's fake?" John hissed behind him, baffled he wasn't told sooner.

"Of course it's fake." Sherlock hissed back, before turning his attention back to the vampire. "Let him live the rest of his miserable life in prison. Let him be known as the worthless loser who stole innocent children in a pathetic attempt to win back his girlfriend. But do not destroy your own life by killing him."

Several events then piled on top of each other in that moment. John realized that since the kidnapper didn't have a gun, there wasn't anything keeping him from immobilizing the bastard and lunged. The bastard in question realized that, because everyone in the room knew he bought his gun from the kid's section, there wasn't anything keeping John from immobilizing him and darted towards the door. One of the kidnapped children managed to dislodge the gag from her mouth and shouted to her father in japanese. Her father forgot about the kidnapper and ran to free his kids. Sherlock tripped the kidnapper as he lunged for the door. John hit the ground. Lestrade opened the door. The kidnapper broke his nose.

And in another room, a maid of the Miyamoto household awoke from a drugged sleep on a bed encrusted with rose petals and felt a cold dread creep up her spine as she realized something was very wrong.

"So glad you decided to drop by." Sherlock greeted the detective inspector with perfectly timed smile as the man he should be arresting writhed in a small pool of blood on the floor.

"This the one?" Donovan asked, rather redundantly. "How'd you find him so quickly?" She asked, more indignation than admiration.

"There was a maid that was away from work today. Ms. Marie Turner. No one knew where she was. She wasn't responding to any calls from her co-workers, nor was she at home. I did some digging and it turns out she owns this conveniently large property with the intention of fixing it up and selling it. I decided to check it out and, would you believe it, I found a pair of kidnapped children." Behind Sherlock the small family clung to each other, crying tears of relief. "Their father followed me, unfortunately."

Lestrade pulled out a well-used notepad and pen, jotting down as much of the facts as he had caught. "Three hours. That must be some sort of record."

"It wasn't exactly difficult." Sherlock sighed as John hauled himself up from the floor. "I'm sure you could've worked it out yourself, had you a lick of common sense and working ears. Now, I've given you the kids entirely unharmed and the kidnapper slightly battered. I've given you your precious explanation as to how I found them both. I don't see why I still need to be here."

After a moment's consideration, Lestrade conceded, stepping aside to allow Sherlock to drag John out the door. "But you're coming in tomorrow to give me your official statement!" He shouted after them in a failed attempt at salvaging a shred of his authority.

Outside, life went on as ever. People rushed about on their lunch break or loitered around the shops. The day was bright and warm. The afternoon air didn't smell quite as bad as it usually did. Even the birds seemed slightly more pleased with themselves than usual.

"Two lives saved by lunchtime." John sighed, admiring the light filtering through the leaves of the trees hanging over them. "Not a bad way to start a day."

"I don't see what you're so pleased about. It's not as if you did anything." Sherlock grumbled, folding his scarf tighter around his neck. "The case was sub-par at best. Failed romance is the most common and least interesting motive by far."

"Of course," John rolled his eyes, almost amused by Sherlock's determination to be moody. "Isn't it a little warm for that?" John asked, gesturing to his flatmate's heavy coat.

"I don't produce body heat." Sherlock answered briefly, clinically, flipping his collar over his scarf.

"Oh." John said, suddenly feeling like an idiot. "Right. So... do all vam- uh I mean, Do all of you do that?"

"Do what?" Sherlock asked, glancing down at himself in baffled confusion. "Wear coats?"

"No, that sound back there. The one the kids were making." The one that was still ringing through his head like the lingering burn of vomit.

"Oh yes. All vampires have a secondary pair of vocal chords which are constantly vibrating. It's entirely subconscious, influenced mainly by emotional state. But there are other factors which can affect it. Temperature, certain drugs, respiratory illnesses..."

"Constantly?" John paused, listening carefully for something beyond the noise of the street. "I don't hear anything from you."

"It's louder in children and grows more subtle with age. You'd need a stethoscope or a loaded gun to make my resonance audible." John remembered the gun in the kidnapper's hand. How did he not recognize the plastic sheen of the paint job? It was so obvious in hindsight. "Even then, I'd be surprised if you noticed any difference. None of you mortals ever listen."

Sherlock flagged down a cab. The ride was silent as John attempted to process the events of the day and edit it down to a potential blog entry and Sherlock fell deeper into the same stormy mood he was in that morning. John was sure a case would've brought him out of it. They usually did.

It felt like this one only made things worse


	14. A Tale of Them

"Werewolves." John wondered aloud, between bites of sub-par Chinese food. Due to a sudden decrease in interesting crimes and patients at the local clinic, he couldn't quite afford his usual place. Luckily, he wasn't desperate enough to resort to Angelo's. The food is never bad, but you get sick of pasta and garlic bread very quickly when eating it three times a day.

'hmm?' Sherlock said, never lifting his eyes from the telly. He had an odd fascination with Jerry Springer that John didn't really want to understand.

"I was thinking. If vampires exist, then are there werewolves roaming about London? Howling at the full moon from their fire escapes. Ordering their steaks extra rare..."

Sherlock stayed silent until commercial break. "No. Well... not the way you're thinking. There is Lycanthropy. But it's just a hormonal disorder that causes rampant hair and nail growth, bone deformity and jaw malformation. Sufferers are sometimes incapable of forming words or walking on two legs. There have been reports of mood swings as well, but that could very well just be a product of the constant pain and being called 'werewolf' all the time." He said, leaning back in his chair as the t.v. cycled through it's commercials.

"Fascinating." He'd heard of disorders with similar symptoms, but had no idea it could be that extreme. "What about... I don't know- fairies. There's no way they exist."

"A species of hyper intelligent insect, not entirely unlike bees. They all went extinct a century ago. But I saw a colony once, as a kid. From a distance they actually do look almost humanoid."

John nearly choked on a piece of overcooked chicken. "You're pulling my leg. I mean, hormonal disorders and alternative dietary preferences are one thing. But-"

Sherlock held up his hand as his show came back on. John rolled his eyes with amused exasperation and tried to tune out the sounds of trash television. Sherlock watched with all of the intensity of a biologist watching a nature documentary.

"Your kind is so strange." He muttered under his breath as a brawl broke out on screen. "It seems like you reproduce as if it's some sort of competition. And then you're shocked at the inevitable outcome. It makes me seriously question your ability to think rationally."

"You do understand that this isn't-" His attempt at defending his species was rudely interrupted by a sharp hiss. John sighed and waited for the next commercial break. "You do understand that this isn't an accurate representation of all humanity, right?"

"Isn't it? Every other day I hear of another teenage pregnancy, another ripped condom, another missed pill. You people are overrunning the planet already. You might not have ten illegitimate children, but from my extensive experience, that is hardly the outlier." He said, the very voice of reason.

"Alright. People make mistakes occasionally, but that doesn't mean everyone's just one step away from being a Jerry Springer contestant. Just means we're human."

"Exactly my point." Sherlock muttered smugly.

"Wait wait wait. You're like a thousand years old. You can't honestly tell me that you've never had a close call. A random fling picked up at some 16th century tavern, limited birth control and understanding of the reproduction system, I imagine shit would hit the fan rather quickly."

"While that's rather... Flattering, I'm afraid it's entirely impossible." Sherlock said cooly, the slightest smirk tugging at his mouth. "I grew up in the victorian era. I was too busy trying not to be arrested for sodomy to knock up prostitutes. Sorry to disappoint."

John felt suddenly that he'd said something massively stupid, but he wasn't entirely sure what. Then he realized. It was pretty much every word that had left his mouth that night. "You're gay?"

Sherlock hummed mockingly. Sarcastically. John didn't know how one hum could make him feel so stupid. "You've already met Victor."

"Y-you mean the skull." John felt, the way a suddenly blinded man feels a doorknob, that he was missing something. "So... He's your boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend sounds so trivial, but I suppose the term is accurate."

"OK... Was he your boyfriend before or after he died?"

Sherlock sighed and stood, shutting off the telly. "Come with me."

John followed Sherlock without a word, just a ravenous curiosity, into his bedroom. He'd never seen the inside of Sherlock's bedroom before, as the vampire had made it very clear that even the space in front of his door was Off Limits. John liked to speculate, to himself and his blog readers, exactly what Sherlock was hiding in there. The most popular possibilities were 1) His secret massive stuffed animal collection, 2) Mirrors. Just so many mirrors, or (the inevitable) 3) A personal porn collection that you could make a museum out of.

Of course, all of these guesses were laughably wrong. What was hiding behind the plain wooden door was a perfectly ordinary bedroom. Which, in itself, was rather… unsettling. It wasn't normal in a real sense as much as an artificial one. It was though he had taken it straight off of a magazine. The bed looked as though it was never meant for sleeping in. The nightstand and the desk didn't have any of the random detritus that any real human's would. All of the frames lining the walls were perfectly level and evenly spaced. There wasn't even any dust lining the surfaces.

When John got over the split second of shock one gets from walking into a magazine, he realized Sherlock was talking.

"I haven't brought these out in years." He muttered reverently as he hauled out a small trunk from the bottom of the impeccably organized closet. He eased the lid open slowly, carefully. "But if this arrangement is going to work, you need to understand."

"What's that?" John peered over Sherlock's shoulder, catching a flash of color before Sherlock scooped the contents out and whirled back to his feet.

"Victor. The real Victor." Sherlock swept past him to the desk. "This isn't all of it. There are notebooks and more serious works and unfinished pieces. But it's enough."

John took up his place a few inches behind Sherlock's left shoulder to peek at the sheets of canvas and paper Sherlock was arranging on the wood surface.

Most were drawings. Rough sketches of noses or ears or vaguely humanoid figures with scribbles of notes on the edges and splashes of soft watercolors. But there were some rough paintings scattered through the collection as well.

"Some of these are self portraits." Sherlock said, waving a sheet of various, exaggerated expressions. "But they're all him. His work. His loves. His fears. His sense of humour. If I could put them all up on display, I would. But they're too fragile. They weren't exactly made to withstand the centuries, so all anyone sees of him anymore is that old relic on the mantelpiece."

John carefully shifted through the collection. He wasn't exactly an art aficionado, but he didn't have to be appreciate the refinement of the linework and the soft richness of the colors. Anyways, it didn't seem that Sherlock brought him here for his eye as a painting critic.

"He was beautiful. A truly exceptional human being. I watched him grow up. I observed the development of every line and wrinkle on his face. I tended to all of his wounds, from papercut to knifewound. I drank so much of his blood, I often suspected I had more of him floating around my system than me." Sherlock continued, dreamily running his fingertips across the aged paper. "He's been dead for a century, but my life will go on for another thousand years or more. There's no one to remember him but me."

John scanned over a detailed graphite portrait, labelled mirror portrait 1882. He was fairly plain of face, with sleepy, dark eyes, a patchy beard and beaky nose. The right eye was also a tad higher than the left, but he assumed that was just a drawing mistake. It was slightly disorienting to know that the skull that sat behind that face was currently sitting on his mantelpiece. But it was beginning to make sense, in a way. Plenty of people keep ashes of loved ones on display, it wasn't much different than that. He remembered all the comrades he lost on the battlefield. The ones that had to be left behind, so their friends and families had nothing left of them but a few leftover belongings and a medal to remember them by. "I'm so sorry."

Sherlock opened his mouth, as if to respond, but he only sighed. "Keeping skulls is an ancient vampiric whole of it is far more complicated than a single night's explanation. But I-"

"Hello, what's this?" John mumbled as he pulled a sheet of canvas paper from under a small pile.

"Oh no no, don't look at that." Sherlock scrambled to snatch back the sheet, but John was too fast. "I-I was sure that was somewhere else."

"How cute." It was a rather meticulous painting of Sherlock about two centuries younger dead asleep titled 'Ye Darke and Mysterious Vampyre'. There wasn't anything mysterious about the cloud of rumpled curls floating over his head, the small lake of pinkish drool collecting on his pillow or the matching warm flush of his cheeks. "You look so young!"

"Because I was around 30 at the time." Sherlock mumbled, poutily. "Ok. That's enough gawking. Put it down."

"Fine." John conceded, setting down the painting. Picking up another immediately afterwards. "Wait, there's an entire stack!"

"No. John, I must insist you put those down now." Sherlock said, frantically tugging at John's sleeve.

"Ohoho,The Vampyre Moste Fearsome. Victor had one hell of a sense of humour." John giggled over a painting of Sherlock curled up at the end of an beat up old sofa. Just as he was about to move on to the next one, the doorbell rang. The two exchanged a hopeful glance.

"A client!"

* * *

This was a pain to write, but it's also one of my favourites. I hope you enjoyed it!

Also, I made a Sym playlist of all the songs that get my creative gears going when I'm writing.

user/rocodarling/playlist/0GBznypzhDiOn56Oha3JxA


	15. For the money

"My step-daughter Amelia is such a sweet girl. I-I'd just hate it if something… happened to her. I mean- she's probably fine. Occasionally she goes out to see friends and things but It's been days. I just get so worried." A man in an expensive yet casual suit blubbered from the sofa. As he fidgeted with his hands, John eyed the rolex around his wrist. This was going to be a good pay-off. "Her mother has been away visiting family for a few weeks and I don't know how I could possibly tell her if Amelia didn't come back. Please, Mr. Holmes. Could you help me?"

Unfortunately, Sherlock didn't seem to think the same. He'd had the same expression of mild disinterest since he walked in. He hadn't even bothered to tell him to get to the point, which was a clear sign that he either already knew where the client's step-daughter was or he just couldn't care if he tried. Sherlock opened his mouth, in preparation to pronounce this case 'boring'

"Sherlock, may I speak to you for a moment in the kitchen?" John cut in, just before he could brush the case off and leave the client for John to dispose of.

Sherlock glanced at John with a look of surprise and faint distaste. "Alright." He sighed, pushing himself from his chair.

"You aren't seriously going to ask me to take the case, are you?" Sherlock asked once the made it out of earshot.

"Well, why not? It's bound to pay well."

"Why not? It's a missing persons case. Basically a game of large-scale hide and seek while carrying a sobbing client on my back." Sherlock spat, looking like he just found a pubic hair in his blood bag. "It's not as if we actually needed the money anyway."

John blinked hard. "We've been scraping the bottom of the barrel for weeks!"

Sherlock scoffed. "Hardly the bo-"

"Mrs. Hudson's been kicking up a fuss because you don't have rent." John said pointedly, shocked that he didn't see the financial state they were in as dire. When he first moved in, he was given the impression that Sherlock had exactly the sort of inexhaustible wealth one might expect from an immortal being of myth. But as the months went on, it became more and more apparent that his monetary wealth comes and goes with all the predictability of the average tornado.

"She's just being dramatic. She knows how these things go. Besides-"

"Just yesterday you borrowed ten quid from a member of your homeless network to pay a cabbie."

"Yes... Well." Sherlock slumped, losing steam rapidly. "Money really isn't my primary form of currency anyways."

"Maybe not yours. But some of us have to live off it. Have you even seen the state of the pantry?"

"Well, I don't know your dietary preferences! I just thought you really liked beans and toast!" Sherlock snapped angrily, causing the client to peer in at them. "Sorry, brief... Culinary discussion."

"We don't even have beans and toast anymore. Just stale crackers and formaldehyde." John hissed after the client awkwardly shuffled back to the sofa. "You might be able to survive on bodily fluids and unpaid debts, but the rest of need a bit more cash."

Sherlock sighed, deflating into something almost like shame. "Alright I'll take the bloody case."

"Thank you." John sighed.

It didn't take long for John to realize that when Sherlock said that missing persons cases were torturous, he wasn't being dramatic. It was only half an hour into the case and already he wished he had the money to pay someone else to do it for him. Her best friend claimed, (after a significant amount of improv on Sherlock's part) that Amelia had gone to a different friend's place to escape her mother's overbearing boyfriend.

"If I had the room, I'd have her stay here for the rest of the week. It's alright when her mum's around. But otherwise... He just seems off." She paused for a moment, considering something. "It's strange, Amy never told me she plays the cello."

John flinched from where he hid.

"She wouldn't've. I just began teaching her this past week. She has a lot of potential, but she just doesn't see it in herself." Sherlock said, smooth as silk. John sighed and rolled his eyes. "That's why I'm so concerned. I'd hate for her to to give up so soon."

"Yeah, that'd be shame. Well, I'll tell her you were concerne-"

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't. I mean, tracking her down through her friends... It's a bit creepy, isn't it?" Sherlock said with a self-deprecating chuckle. John could just imagine the fake puppy dog smile he must've slapped on like a halloween mask. He rolled his eyes harder.

"A bit, yeah." The girl chuckled back. "Well, is there a number I could reach you at? In case I see Amy or... Need music lessons."

John groaned. This case could end before lunchtime and it'd still be too long.

A two minutes and one bumbling explanation of why one's phone would end up at the bottom of the Thames later, Sherlock walked to the niche where John was waiting.

"Well that went well." John smirked, trailing behind the detective as he swept stormily down the street.

"I'm not a magician, John. No matter how often you insist so on your blog." Sherlock sighed, pouting to himself. "Women have never been my area of expertise."

John hummed in concurrence. "So, off to this other friend's place?"

"No." John blinked in confusion.

"But it's the only lead we have." John stated, going through the facts in his head. "Isn't it?"

"Our client introduced himself as Amelia's stepfather, correct?" Sherlock asked, rhetorically.

"Yeah so?" Sherlock answered only with a pointed silence. John got it. "The best friend called him her mother's boyfriend."

"Her mother's boyfriend 'who seems a bit off' no less. Teenage girls have a sort of sixth sense about these things. If sweet old ladies are the security cameras of the world, teenage girls are it's sniffer dogs." Sherlock said proudly as he flagged down a cab.

"I just hope this doesn't affect our pay."

* * *

Just a reminder that comments are very welcome! I know people are reading this somewhere out there in the world because the numbers keep changing,, but if I never get comments, I still feel like I'm writing to an empty room.


	16. A Brief Detour

John's hope was in vain. After a routine raid of their client/primary suspect, they found a few telling pieces of evidence, each indicating an unhealthy level of obsession with Amelia. After a brief, unofficial interrogation the stepfather admitted that his relationship with Amelia's mother was just an act to get closer to the girl. The authorities were informed and the detective and the doctor walked away not a cent richer than before. Literally, as they hadn't money for cab fare.

"Remind me again why we took this case?" Sherlock sighed gloomily during the long walk home.

"We did a civil service. Took a bad man off the streets." John reasoned, whether for his benefit or Sherlock's he couldn't be entirely sure

"That's not what you said when you asked me to take this case." Sherlock said with a smug sort of misery. "You said- oh dear how did you put it again? It was such a clever line, I'd hate to get it wrong."

"Sherlock, please."

"Good thing I mentally recorded it in case of this very occasion- 'It's bound to pay well'." The vampire growled through his teeth, stomping childishly across the street.

"Well, how was I supposed to know he was a predatory pedophile? I thought that was your job." John grunted back as he turned a corner.

"No, this way." Sherlock matched on forward.

"But this is the way to Baker Street."

"Well, we're taking a brief detour." Sherlock explained unhelpfully, turning down a random street. John followed a few feet behind, a habit he was becoming increasingly familiar with. They weaved through alleyways and shadowed streets to a more fashionable side of town. The kind of place that even tourists would find a bit too pricey. Sherlock, with his understated elegance and subtle dramatics, fit in like a drop in a rainstorm. John tried his best to hide in his shadow.

They ducked swiftly into a jewelry shop. The kind of shop that sells diamond rings at twice the price of a house and half the weight. The kind of shop that celebrities find extravagant.

"Good evening sirs. How can we help you today?" A young man with a diamond bright smile and hair styled within an inch of it's life asked breezily.

"I'm here to speak to Mr. Herald." Sherlock said with a cold precision, not giving him a spare glance.

The man chuckled nervously. "I'm afraid he's not available today. Perhaps if you mad-"

"Yes he is. Tell him it's Sherlock Holmes. I'll be waiting." The vampire stated definitively, leaving no room for further questions.

"A-alright." The man said, his smiled faltering slightly.

Less than a minute later, an elderly man John could only assume to be Mr. Herald walked up to them, beaming with teeth polished so brightly that John wouldn't have been surprised to find them displayed in one of the glass cases surrounding the room.

"Sherlock! My favorite customer!" He said with all the sincerity of a Shakespearean actor. He glanced at John with a strange expression of surprised amusement that put him mildly off balance. "How have you been? It's been too long since I've seen you last."

"Let's cut to the chase, you know how much I dislike pleasantries," Sherlock replied with a drawn out eye-roll. He pulled a pocket watch from his coat pocket and held it up for the Jeweler's inspection. "Solid silver, all original fittings, no later than early 17th century. Still keeps impeccable time."

Harold curled a bony hand around it. "What are you asking?

After an athletic bout of haggling, involving a not entirely insignificant amount thinly veiled insults, Sherlock swept out of the store counting a stack of cash so thick he having some difficulty wrapping his hand around it. "Of course it's all in ones, the self-indulgent, greedy old relic."

"You didn't do that just for me, did you? I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but your mother's watc-"

"Oh calm down, I nicked it off Mycroft last time he visited." Sherlock barked, cutting John off as he attempted to stuff the wad into his coat pocket. "I was going to wait awhile longer, hoping that would make a random visit here a little less suspicious. But he probably already knows anyways, so what would the point be?"

John chuckled at the siblings' antics. "Do you do that often? Sell off his stuff while he's not looking?"

"Not as often as I used to." Sherlock smirked, impishly. "Hungry?"

"Starving."


	17. The Starving Detective

Wow, I really fell behind on updates.

Don't worry though I've still been writing up a storm, I just... haven't gotten around to posting. I have quite a few of chapters back-logged which I will be posting over the next few days.

* * *

Sherlock hadn't left the sofa in days.

At first, John wasn't terribly worried as it fell within the parameters of caseless moodiness. Even when hours stretched into days, he considered it better than him going on a boredom-fueled destructive rampage. Besides, he was out of the apartment for a significant amount of time. So it was likely that Sherlock could have been up and about while John was out. Or in his room. Or sleeping. There was really no way to know for certain that he hadn't.

Then John came from work to the distinct, unmistakable smell of urine emanating from the sofa. Now Sherlock was quite blasé when it came to many aspects of cleanliness. It was in no way uncommon to find urine samples in the refrigerator, in his favorite mug or filling the bathtub with the help of an antique bear rug. But he was fairly meticulous when it came to his personal hygiene. There were only so many circumstances involving bodily fluids and his clothing that he tolerated for extended for significant amounts of time. And even then, not happily. So, when John found that his friend lying on the sofa had soiled himself and done nothing to remedy the matter, his first instinct was to call an ambulance. Then he got a grip and called Lestrade.

A hum filled the space behind his ears as he listened to the dial tone. A sickly, coarse vibration. John called it stress and forgot about it as Lestrade picked up.

"It's Sherlock." John said immediately, the second he picked up the phone. "Something's… the matter with him. He hasn't moved from the sofa for days."

"How long?" Lestrade groaned, his voice clinical. "Is he awake?"

"Four, five days? He's… entirely unresponsive. Eyes open, but glazed over." John listed as he examined Sherlock. "He's barely reacting to physical stimuli. Occasional muscle twitches. What is this, an overdose?"

"I'm afraid not." There was a pause, a rustle of static as Lestrade juggled the phone. "Try to get him conscious. Or as close to it as you can. I'll be there in ten."

"Ok." John sighed, hitting the end button. He looked down at the twisted, crumpled body sprawled facedown across the sofa. "…ok."

He nudged Sherlock's shoulder, not expecting a reaction but unsure of where exactly to start. As he expected, nothing happened. He pressed a finger to the vampire's neck to measure his pulse and proceeded to swallow a panic attack when he found it to be roughly 10 beats per minute.

"Not human. Right. I keep forgetting." The doctor muttered to himself. The moment he began to pull his hand away, Sherlock bolted into some facsimile of wakefulness, grabbing John's hand and gasping like a fish left out to dry.

"Hurts. Oh god it hurts." Sherlock panted, his eyes squeezing shut. "Please. Please don't go."

"It's alright. I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere." John reassured the delirious vampire, placing his free hand against his back to calm him. "Can you tell me where it hurts?"

"Don't… leave." Sherlock groaned, his grip on John loosening. "Father, please."

John knelt down. Whatever burst of life that Sherlock had gained seemed to be fading quickly. "Sherlock. Can you open our eyes for me? Just a little."

He did. They were unfocused and heavy, but it showed he had some measure of awareness and that was enough. The humming shifted to a shrill screech, like a mosquito buzzing around between John's ears. He took a deep breath

"It hurts." Sherlock whined, squinting against the already dim light of the lamp across the room. He sounded suddenly so much like a lost child, it was frightening. Like witnessing a demonic possession of sorts. It was entirely characteristic of Sherlock to act childish. But this was something else entirely. "Father, I'm afraid."

"What are you afraid of?" John asked, just to keeping him talking.

"The eels. It hurts." He gasped, his voice cracking. "Cut them out. Please."

"You'll be ok, someone's on their way right now." John, deciding to play along with Sherlock's delusion, put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You'll make it through this."

Sherlock's eyes drifted off past John's shoulder, then fluttered back closed. John shook his shoulder, but the only thing that came of it was John's hand falling out of his grip. "Sherlock? Sherlock, wake up. Can you hear me? Come on, Sherlock."

It was a good minute before Sherlock regained consciousness. This time, though, he seemed more lucid. "John. Please tell me you didn't throw out all the morphine."

"I'm not giving you morphine, Sherlock." John rolled his eyes, secretly pleased to have the old Sherlock back.

"This is serious." He breathed, rolling onto his back with some effort.

"Yeah. From what I've been told, so is your addiction." John took a seat on the edge of the coffee table, as his bad leg was giving him hell. "Lestrade will be here any minute now."

"I'm sure to prescribe me with an ample dose of morphine."

John scoffed. "Could you at least tell me what's wrong?"

"Too much pain, not enough morphine." He grunted, sinking deeper into the sofa. One of his hands reached up and clutched at the armrest he was using as a pillow, the muscles in his arm twitching worryingly.

"Can you tell me what's causing the pain?" John spelled out carefully. His relief at getting Sherlock to his usual state fading by the second. "Or the location of the pain?"

"Everything. Everywhere." He replied in short gasps, determined to be difficult.

"Sherlock."

"Fine! I'm starving. I can't stand the thought of drinking another drop of damned frozen goat's blood and now my body's devouring itself from the inside like a salmon. My muscles have been sapped of too much blood to allow me to walk straight, the pain won't allow me to think straight and every piece of evidence points to my very slow and agonizing demise. So if you would do me the courtesy of putting me out of my misery or, at the very least, leaving the room before I start vomiting up my internal organs, you would have my thanks." The vampire shouted in a burst of fitful energy, raising himself up on one arm just to collapse back into the sofa, gasping from the effort exerted. He curled into himself, imitating a massive, blue salad shrimp.

"You…" He began again, speaking quietly to his knees. "You're a soldier. Accustomed to packing quickly. Take anything you need. My account's fairly dry, but the chemistry equipment should sell well."

"Sher-" John gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to slap his flat mate.

"Costume departments have been after my clothing for years. They-"

"Shut up." He growled with definitive finality. "You can just shut up right now, because I'm not listening. I'm not selling off you're clothing. I'm not leaving. And you're not dying. I'm not going to let you. Do you hear me? I won't listen to another word of your damn theatrics. So you have two options. Tell me how to help you, or sulk like a fucking child. What will it be?"

Sherlock gaped in stunned silence even as the door flew open.


	18. Natural Remedies

"Oh Sherlock. For God's sake." Lestrade groaned as entered, wrinkling his nose at the sudden smell of urine. He seemed much less haggard than he usually did when he visited Baker street, seeking assistance on a case. It seemed as if some of the load was taken out of the bags under his eyes and his hair was combed by something other than fingers.

Sherlock shrunk away from Lestrade's sight, suddenly painfully conscious of his own… state. "Lovely to see you too. If you could just leave the morphine on side table and leave, I would be most thankful. Enjoy your date with the wife." He enunciated carefully in an attempt to appear functional.

"Oh, shove it. I'm not going anywhere." Lestrade sighed, carefully hanging his good jacket on the hat stand. "John, go draw a hot bath."

Knowing he wasn't quite in his depth with this matter John left and did as he was told, not that there was room for anything else in Lestrade's tone of voice. Just as the bathwater started flowing warm, he heard the sounds of struggle at the end of the hall but before he could get up, he caught some snatches of conversation that cooled his panic. He watched the clear, glass green waters rise slowly higher and breathed through his nose in attempt to steady himself.

"I'm not a toddler." John heard Sherlock bark, his voice slurred and muffled.

"No, of course not. You just pissed yourself, forgot how to walk and had a tantrum. Nothing childish about that." Lestrade said, clearly just outside the door. "John open the door."

He did. Just in time to see Sherlock, half slung over Lestrade's shoulder, glare hard enough to give himself an aneurism.

"John, could you help me get him undressed?" Sherlock blinked as he was dropped onto the toilet like a sack of potatoes. He listed worryingly to one side, Lestrade caught his shoulder.

"No." He spat as he wriggled away from Lestrade. Or tried to anyways. "I'll undress myself. Just- give me a little… privacy."

"Fine." Lestrade nodded, but otherwise didn't budge. "John, turn around."

John turned around.

"Could you at the very least look away?" Sherlock huffed at Lestrade.

"Someone has to make sure you don't pass out. Would you like it to be me or John?"

Sherlock said nothing, only reached for the edge of his shirt.

"I am a doctor, you know." John pointed out, speaking mostly to the wall. "I have experience with naked bodies."

"Not up for discussion." The words sounded forced, as though physically pushed through his throat. "Lestrade. Give me a hand."

With some measure of awkwardness and careful maneuvering, Sherlock was deposited into the steaming bath water and John was released from his time out.

"Sherlock said that this was all the effects of starvation. Is that true?" John asked as they watched Sherlock's consciousness fade.

The detective inspector sighed, slouching against the bathroom wall. "They call it Consumption."

"Not tuberculosis, I'm assuming?"

"No. No, it's much more literal than that. It's basically the late stages of starvation. When a vampire goes without blood for too long, the body starts cannibalizing itself by digesting it's own blood supply."

"So what good's a hot bath going to do him? He's starving, so he needs food right? Well, I've got a pocket knife. Open his mouth" John began rolling up his sleeve, eager to do something other than just stand around and watch his flatmate suffer.

"No!" Lestrade protested immediately. "He's under too much stress. He wouldn't be able to keep anything down and it'd make recovery just that much harder. Heat's a pain reliever. It can't make his body stop digesting itself, but it makes the process less destructive. If we're really lucky, we might not need drugs."

John ground his teeth as he watched Sherlock, sopping wet and wearing nothing more than a towel, stare blearily into the middle distance. He rolled his sleeve back down. He wasn't used to this. He hadn't been so lost on what to do with an injured person since before medical school. Even as a child, he knew how to deal with most seasonal illness and whatever scrapes and bruises his father could throw at him. "Why would he do this to himself? Why would he let it go so far, if he knew this was going to happen?"

"Consumption is something of a chronic condition for a lot of unmated vampires. I don't understand it either, but that doesn't change anything."

"I can hear, you know." Sherlock murmured, his voice just as substantial as the steam drifting around him. "Not dead yet."

"You're not going to die. You'll be fine." Lestrade assured. "I'm sorry. I was supposed to be looking after you."

Sherlock flicked his wrist, splashing Lestrade. "I don't need a babysitter. You're only here because Mycroft pays you to be anyways."

"No one pays me." Lestrade said with the flat voice of someone bored of repeating the same line. "And if I was getting paid, it bloody well wouldn't be enough."

Sherlock smirked weakly, awkwardly lifting himself to a sitting position in the water with one hand clutching the towel acting as his only shred of privacy. "Money, power, sex. It's all the same. I've always wondered how you could've possibly become a detective inspector so quickly." Lestrade rolled his eyes, but didn't respond. Sherlock sighed and reached for the shampoo. "Get out."

"Feeling better, then?" Lestrade asked, already beginning to stand.

Sherlock squirted a ridiculously expensive gob of goo into his palm and completely ignored the fact that they hadn't left the room yet.

"I'll take that as a yes." Lestrade sighed, gently directing John out the door before him.

"But-will he be alright?" John asked as Lestrade shut the door. "He won't… lose consciousness and drown?"

"He'll be fine." Lestrade sighed, walking towards the kitchen. "Do you have tea?"

"Yeah, right next to the kettle."


	19. Awkward First Time

A few hours later, the roar of stagnant panic building up behind John's ears simmered down to a quiet rumble. The danger had finally passed. Or the worst of it anyway. Sherlock was currently propped up in bed sandwiched between about five thick duvets and an electric blanket. He was more awake and aware than he had been since John found him. The muscle twitches and sudden bursts of energy had all faded, leaving Sherlock exhausted but essentially himself again.

But he still refused to eat.

"What about Molly?" Lestrade suggested wearily from the fainting sofa across from the bed, already knowing how Sherlock would reply. Sherlock shook his head slowly, as thought it might fall off. "Why not?"

"You know why not." He barked, pulled a face. Lestrade took a moment to think before pulling the same face.

"Why? What's wrong with Molly?" John asked from his place against the doorframe. He'd been put on tea-brewing duty. Although Sherlock declined any offer off blood, he was still perfectly willing to drink tea. So they brewed it up by the pot. He'd drunk at least a gallon so far.

Sherlock shot Lestrade a warning glance, which he ignored. "Last time he tried to feed off her from the flesh she… got off."

"Oh." John tried to think of an occasion in which a woman's orgasm might not be welcome. He couldn't come up with any off the top of his head. "And that's bad?"

"Imagine you were enjoying a slab of burnt cow at a restaurant and the cook came up, asked you how you're liking it then ejaculated all over it." Sherlock illustrated, somberly. "It's bad."

There was an awkward silence as everyone in the room tried to clear their head of that particularly graphic metaphor. Feeding

"Mrs. Hudson then?" Lestrade asked, cutting the awkward tension. Sherlock seemed to consider it for a moment.

"Visiting her sister." John replied. "Why can't you just feed off Lestrade? You've done it a hundred times before."

Sherlock didn't answer. Just sucked at his teeth and traced the Chinese calligraphy on the far wall with his eyes.

"That is a very good question, Sherlock."

"You always leave." The vampire said under his breath, like a scared child. "You leave the first chance you get every time, staying as far away as one can in the meantime. Every moment I have with you is stolen using cheap antics such as inconveniently falling asleep on your arm. It's like you only bother to keep me alive because you don't want to be responsible for killing me"

The weight of the silence became too much for Lestrade. His gaze dropped to the floor. "I'm sorry, I-"

The teapot whistled. John made a start towards it, but Lestrade seemed more than happy to take his place.

Sherlock drew the blankets tighter around himself and shut his eyes. John would've liked to believe he was asleep, but knew it was only to gain some relief from the light streaming in from the hall.

"What about mine?" John asked after what he thought was a moment's consideration. In truth, he'd been considering it for the past few months. And not just wondering in passing why he hadn't been eaten alive. He'd been dying to know exactly what that must feel like. How long would it take? How much would he take? Would it be the same as that night after the kidnapping? Or would it be…. More.

"No. I can't ask that of you." Sherlock replied in the tone of someone who would very much like to. "You're too new. You don't understand-."

"I don't care if you're not asking, I'm offering." John clarified. "Although, it is a limited offer. Because eventually, I'm going to strap you down and shove it down your throat."

Sherlock laughed. But it didn't sound like any laughter he'd heard from him before. It sounded more like a very small jet engine than anything human and there wasn't much of a facial expression to go along with it. But somehow he could feel the amusement. It occurred to John that this must be what Sherlock's laughter sounds like when he didn't have the energy to act human. "You can try."

He slumped against the headboard, staring off into his own thoughts. "I accept." The vampire said quietly, almost mouthing the words. It came as surprise to both of them.

"Alright then. Good. I-" John started, unsure of where exactly to go from there. If he were honest with himself, he'd have to admit that he hadn't expected it to go so well.

"But not like this. Leave. Let me prepare."

The door shut.

Sherlock nearly fell flat on his face in his haste to get out of bed. After stepping back and judging exactly how much strain his underused and undernourished body was willing to take, he shuffled to the closet, making a point of staying close to the wall.

He rifled through the clothes in his closet at a speed comparable to that of John's typing. It was agonizing. He knew exactly what items he was looking for and their location in closet, if only he could make his body get to them faster. His legs shook lightly, likely to give out in roughly five minutes. Which was fine. After he'd gotten all of the things he was looking for, he'd no longer need them. Everything he needed would be delivered to him, perfectly wrapped in a warm, wooly jumper and a biting smile.

Sherlock shook his head, stopping his mind from wandering too far. He had less time than he'd originally estimated. Better skip the pants.

The vampire tossed the small pile of clothing onto the antique fainting couch nearby and began pulling them on. The trousers and jacket were just a matter of strategic maneuvering and patience, but the shirt… the shirt might as well have been a bloody riddle made by Dolce &amp; Fucking Gabbana. But it was necessary. It was a part of The Uniform and The Uniform gave him authority. It made people trust his judgement and follow orders without question. Or at least John did.

Lord knows he didn't like being the figure of authority in times like these. But John, being a soldier, might find some comfort in following orders. Sherlock fumbled through the drawer of the nightstand conveniently within arm's reach, pulling out a narrow wooden box and a cheap lighter. With a practiced flick, he lit a stick of incense already set up on the nightstand. Japanese. Wisteria scented. Much too sugary for his tastes, but most humans find it calming.

Then the finishing touches. He arranged himself in the center of the couch. Legs crossed just so, hair lightly ruffled, back straight- or would it be better if he were sitting back? Yes, definitely. He's in his own home, not ballet practice. He should be relaxed. Sherlock took a deep breath and tried his best to look living.

"John!" He knew he wouldn't have to shout very loud, thankfully. He could smell the human standing just outside the door. Along with Lestrade and another pot of rapidly cooling tea.

The door opened and John stepped quietly inside. He was sweating. Nervous? What a strange thing for John to be.

Lord, did his sweat smell delicious.

"Sherlock, where are you?" John asked, fumbling at the empty bed. Sherlock could've slapped himself. It was dark. He spent a solid five minutes doing up a button-down when he could've been wearing a sodding lace negligee and John wouldn't have known the difference. Decreased mental capacity must be setting back in.

He reached over to the lamp on the nightstand, switching it to the lowest setting. "Come, sit." Sherlock gestured to the raised end of the couch.

John did, licking his lips fretfully as he tried to make himself comfortable. "Something smells amazing. Is-"

"Yes. Incense. To calm the nerves."

He chuckled. "I'm surprised you didn't break out the candles and rose petals."

Sherlock blinked. "If it would help, I have a few candles in the closet in case of emergency."

"No. No, it's fine. So, how-"

"Like this," Sherlock announced before cradling John's jaw and leaning in close.

"Woah, what's happening?" John jerked away, just before their lips met.

Sherlock bit his lip in frustration. Why did humans have to make such a fuss about every little thing? "My saliva contains a strong painkilling agent. This is the easiest way to administer it."

John wriggled his way out of Sherlock's grasp. "I think I'll survive, thank you."

Sherlock rubbed at his temples, already missing the warmth of John's skin. "It really isn't for your benefit. I can't feed off you if you're in pain. And honestly, if you can't handle a kiss then you are not ready for the intimacy involved with… this." The vampire sighed, turning away from the harsh light of the lamp. "Get out. I'll… manage. Somehow."

"Sherlock." John prodded, causing Sherlock to look up just long enough for him to weave his fingers into the curls at the base of his skull and haul him into a soft introductory kiss. "Relax a little, alright? I'd just like a little warning. If you haven't noticed, I'm kind of in the dark here."

It took a second for the detective to process exactly what John was saying, as the fingers gently caressing the nape of his neck were making his vision go a little blurry. But eventually, he caught on. "Warning. Yes, good idea. Well, be warned. I'm going to kiss you until your head goes foggy. Then you'll take the knife from this box, use it to pierce your flesh and I'll… do the rest."

John smiled. Sherlock snogged it off him.

A/N: Yes, this takes place in some strange alternate dimension where everyone actually talks about their feelings.

There are some pretty strict guidelines in vampiric tradition to feeding. A few are societal, most are just internal.


	20. The Morning After (reprise)

John woke up feeling… dry. Very dry. It was like the gobi desert took a shit in his mouth then, as an encore, reached its arm down his throat and sanded down his esophagus. And yet… he felt amazing. He felt like he was floating just half an inch above himself, his skin glowing with a golden warmth. He curled his arm tighter around the vampire sprawled across him, nudging at the top of his head with his chin.

Sherlock didn't even stir. He hadn't budged since their last bout of feeding roughly… two hours ago. He was sleeping the sleep even the dead only dreamed of sleeping. Every once and awhile, his nose would twitch against his neck. But otherwise, he might as well have been made of wood. Wood that hummed.

Like a… dead tree containing a large bee hive.

It was good, though. Sherlock needed this. He was obviously worn down to the bone and this was probably his first time actually sleeping in weeks. John didn't care how different his biology was, he needed actual sleep occasionally. Everything does.

He moved Sherlock's head to a slightly more comfortable position off his shoulder and onto his chest, flexing his arm to get the blood flowing in it again. As he did, he realized his fingers were still wrapped around the handle of the knife that he'd drawn his own blood with just half an hour before. And a half an hour before that. And five minutes before that. It seemed Sherlock preferred to take his meals one sip at a time. But that was beside the point. The point was… on the knife in John's hand. It was very sharp. He passed the knife to his other, freer, hand to examine it a little closer. His eyes traced the crusts of blood lining every floral whirl of metal, thinking mindlessly how it could possibly be cleaned safely.

Then a thought passed through his head. Just a whim, really. He wondered how much it would take to wake Sherlock. So, without really thinking, John pressed the flat of the cold blade against Sherlock's neck.

"Try it." Sherlock mumbled against John's chest. "I dare you."

John huffed a bewildered laugh. "You want me to kill you?"

"No. But if you were to kill me, I'd prefer it to be now. I'm warm, well-fed, well-rested… There are worse ways to go." Sherlock yawned, plucking the knife out of John's hand and raising it to his lips. "It's not as if you'd do it anyhow."

John waggled his head in agreement, groaning as another flood of mild euphoria washed through his system. "Is it always like this?"

Sherlock hummed a negative as he sucked the dried blood from the many crevices of the blade. "Hasn't been for a long time. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson do their best for me, but there's just no pleasure in it. Not like the old days, when I half had to beg Victor to keep his fluids in his body. He'd bleed himself dry in a second. Just to keep me warm."

That was a lot of information to take in while inebriated, so John didn't mostly. He just let it glide gently over his head as Sherlock licked at the drained wounds on his shoulder. "Still hungry?"

"It'd be unwise to take any more from you today." He sighed, pushing himself off of John slowly, hesitantly.

John grinned lazily. That's what he said last time. He wound his fingers into Sherlock's curls, dragging him down into something that was similar to a kiss, but just a little too wet.

* * *

When John next awoke, he was alone, the vampire-shaped weight on his body mysteriously absent. The saliva pooled in his clavicle was fast on its way to drying, so he guessed that Sherlock had been away for at least fifteen minutes.

Although he felt completely and utterly drained in several ways, his bladder was full to bursting. In the back of his mind he was thankful for that, as otherwise he might never have gotten up the motivation to move from his place on the couch. John slowly sat up, stretching his neck and back as they were both sore from holding one position for so long. Gingerly, like a 90 year old man after a run-in with a bus, he eased his weight onto his feet and moved slowly towards the door. Luckily, once he started moving his muscles gradually began to remember that they were, in fact, functional rather than decorative and began to act as such.

As he was taking what was perhaps the most satisfying piss in all of human history, his nose caught the bacon frying. It occurred to John that he'd forgotten exactly how much time had passed since he last ate. In fact, he just might've forgotten about the existence of food entirely. But none of that mattered, because all he knew now was that the bacon currently cooking smelled so good, he might've blacked out for a second just thinking about it. His mouth watered with perhaps the last ounce of moisture left in his body and he almost forgot to put his penis away in his haste to get to the kitchen.

"John." Sherlock rumbled in greeting, glancing over his shoulder for a brief second before cracking a couple of eggs into the sizzling pan. In that second, he managed to give the doctor the most thorough once-over he'd ever experienced, followed by a self-satisfied smirk. "I tried to wake you, but my efforts were utterly futile. So I assume you were sleeping very well."

"Yeah." John growled, his throat too rough and dry for anything else. He resisted the urge to just shove his mouth under the tap and poured himself a glass of water. A rather troubling thought occurred to him. By his nigh-impeccable sense of time, it should be late evening and Sherlock was making breakfast. "It's not morning, is it?"

"Not sure. Do humans consider 1:15 to be morning? I've always wondered." Sherlock replied as he kept a careful eye on the eggs. "Also, do you like your eggs runny?"

"No. Thank you." John answered, drinking his third glass of water. "May I ask why you're making bacon and eggs at 1:15am?"

"I only ever drank from Victor at night."

John wondered briefly if Sherlock truly wasn't making sense, or if it was his thoroughly addled mind that couldn't make sense of what otherwise would be a perfectly logical sentence. "Sorry, what?"

"I drank from Victor at night. So when he'd come to, it would be early morning and when I offered to cook for him, he'd request bacon and eggs. So I've never learnt to cook anything other than bacon and eggs." Sherlock elaborated slowly as he tipped the eggs onto the same plate that held the bacon and carried the plate to the spot John had officially, unofficially claimed at the kitchen table. "If you ever choose to repeat tonight's events and would prefer something different, I'd be more than happy to have Mrs. Hudson teach it to me."

John responded only by sitting in the chair Sherlock had pulled out for him and staring in shock at the almost picturesque set-up of two fried eggs and three slices of crisp bacon. "Now all I need is two slices of toast and an obnoxious voice-over and I could sell this as an advert."

"I don't make toast." He said sternly, taking a seat at the side of the table adjacent to John, rather than across from him. "There was an incident."

"No toast then." John blinked, munching on a slice of bacon. "Oh, I need a fork."

Before the words had even left his mouth, Sherlock was up, whirling about like a hawk set loose in the house. "Allow me."

He landed, almost by sheer luck, back in his chair. The detective brandished one of their better forks, stabbing at a generous pile of eggs and holding it about mouth level in front of John's face. His eyebrow twitched expectantly.

"Sherlock." John started. "What are you doing."

There was a long moment. Then Sherlock dropped the fork, letting it clatter against the plate as if he was shocked to find himself holding it.

"I'm sorry. Old habits. I… " Sherlock turned a rather flattering shade of pink and looked down at his hands. "No one stays this long."

John sighed into a bite of egg.

"But, of course you live here, so it's not like you have a choice. Just say the word, I'll back off." He swooped back out of his seat, hardly breathing as he ranted on. "Do you… need anything from tesco? I could pick up the shopping. I noticed you're low on eggs. Well, I think you are, I'm not entirely sure what a normal amount of eggs is but-"

"Sherlock. Stop." The world's greatest detective froze with one arm in his coat and the other reaching for his scarf. John sprinkled a little salt over the eggs and continued to chow down. Taking small, careful bites to keep himself from wolfing it down too quickly. "Sit down."

Sherlock sat, with half his coat still hanging off his shoulder. He stared intently, obviously fighting the urge to bite his lip and shrink away like a scolded child.

John set down the fork, the handle pointed in Sherlock's direction. "This is something you need isn't it? Like the special sofa and the special knife and having me cut myself. This is a part of the ritual too."

"Yes." Sherlock mumbled. "Reciprocation, it's very important to us."

"Then go on." John smiled, nodding towards the fork. He tried his best not to feel too weird as Sherlock fed him like a newly-weaned toddler. "And for the record, I prefer my eggs scrambled."


	21. The World's Worst Cup of Tea

"You know what I could really use right now?" Sherlock sighed, curled up in an improbably small ball in his PJs and one of his more decadent satin dressing gowns. Nothing hits the spot quite like the blood of someone who truly wants you to have it. He wasn't entirely sure if it was something about the chemical make-up of the blood itself or the psychological effect of having someone sacrifice something so vital to their existence so willingly that made it so damn satisfying, but he honestly couldn't remember the last time a meal felt that good. He took a deep breath as his stomach rumbled, reminding him of the heat still inside him, still waiting to be assimilated into his body. "A cigarette."

"Not happening, Sherlock." John said over the edge of his laptop. By his rumpled forehead, he was probably filtering out all of the important and interesting bits out of the last few days so he could transcribe the remaining watered down dregs onto his blog. Sherlock wondered how he might adapt the events of last night for the eyes of the general public. Perhaps the human version of himself which lives in John's fictionalized world had contracted a cold and needed the help of a doctor. Or maybe he'd… forgotten to eat while caught up in the chase again and John ordered take-out. Both options were adequately boring and inaccurate.

"I know. Just… saying. It'd be appreciated." He didn't really need one. Smoking just goes so well with a good drink. Maybe he just needed to give his mouth something to do.

John ignored him, instead pecking out some bland little lies letter by letter onto his keyboard. God, it'd be quicker if he'd chosen to write out the blog entry by hand one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five times, tied it to the feet of one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five pigeons and flew them out to his readers. Although it would've been a tad embarrassing when ten of those pigeons circled back around to their front door. Eleven, actually. Mrs. Hudson reads the blog too.

Sherlock snapped to attention when the somewhat hypnotic clicking of the keyboard stopped. He looked up to find John rubbing at his temples, wincing from a mild headache. The saliva must be wearing off. Time for another dose.

"I think I'll make tea, you want a cup?" Sherlock asked, uncurling himself. He would've liked to administer it the old fashion way, by mouth. Or perhaps even the Victorian way, curled up in each other's arms reveling in the sheer joy of shared body fluids. But he doubted John would be up for that.

"No, thank you. I'm fine." John replied. Sherlock pulled out two cups anyway, spitting generously into one of them with practiced silence. As the kettle boiled, John's typing slowed from two words a minute to a word every two minutes. Eventually, he saved whatever progress he made and shut his laptop a little harder than usual. Sherlock shut off the kettle just as it began to simmer, dunking a tea bag in the barely hot water and wringing it gently to speed up the steeping process.

Finally, he swept back into the living room and shoved John's tea into his arm so he'd have no choice but to take it.

"God, why do I ever let you make tea? This is awful." John grimaced as Sherlock pretended to drink his own cup of vaguely warm water.

Sherlock watched silently as John took another long sip. And another. Just as the lines in his face began to loosen and soften, there was a knock on the door. A precise, pretentious sort of knock that could only mean one thing. Mycroft.

And he was having such a good day.

Sherlock drew himself from his chair stormily, throwing the door open with barely-restrained fury. His brother stood in the doorway with a smile that was just slightly too sugary. As much as Mycroft enjoyed mocking his younger brother's less than successful efforts at assimilating himself into human society, the supposedly more experienced and knowledgeable vampire was awful at replicating human facial expression.

"Sherlock, how lovely it is to see you up and about so soon." Mycroft somehow managed to say sarcastically, despite being entirely sincere.

"How dare you cross my threshold without permission." Sherlock growled, flashing just a hint of teeth. He was in no mood to be receiving any visitors, especially not family. Which was why he had taken the precaution of turning off every function phone in the house and hiding John's between the couch cushions. "I could call Mummy right now and have you beheaded."

"That only applies if the dwelling belongs entirely to you, which it does not."

"But you still have to get permission to cross the threshold of a dwelling in which a vampire resides from the owner of the dwelling and Mrs. Hudson has been out for the past week."

"True, but she sent me this text roughly four months ago which states clearly that I am 'welcome any time, dearie'." Mycroft responded, coolly flashing his phone which had been scrolled down to that particular text before he had even approached the door.

Sherlock glared. "She was just being nice, she didn't actually mean you were free to break into her house while she's away and harass me."

"It would stand up in court though, should you choose to press charges." Mycroft pointed out, slipping his phone back into his pocket. "Now, would let me in?

"No. The house might belong to Mrs. Hudson, but this flat belongs to me."

"Well, I'm not here to talk to you." Mycroft peered over Sherlock's shoulder, making eye-contact with the army doctor by the fireplace. "John, could I speak with you for a moment?"

John, having become much more impressionable under the influence of his tea, shrugged. "Sure, come in."

"I'm going to my room!" Sherlock announced after shooting his flatmate an incredulous and scandalized glance. "And no one is welcome in!"


End file.
